Inflation Is Coming!

Some say: Inflation didn’t rise after 2008-2015 Fed QE, so it won’t rise this time. Here are the problems with that argument.

1) From 2008-2015 regulators hammered the banks, so while the Fed’s balance sheet expanded, M2 did not accelerate.

2) In 2020, we used the banks to push out money, the opposite of the first round of QE. PPP loans were financed through banks and unemployment checks were direct-deposited.
3) The M2 measure of money is up more than 25% in the past 12 months.

4) That alone, 25%+ M2 growth, is enough, but we are compounding the problems.
5) Regulating fossil fuel production drives energy prices up.
6) Ag, industrial & transportation are energy intensive, and many claim they are bad for the environment. Result: higher prices.

7) Federal government borrowing and deficit spending encourages more Fed money printing, and artificially lifts demand.
8) Higher tax rates, rising minimum wage, and big government crowd out the private sector; reducing supply.
9) Demand up; Supply down! Inflation is coming.

I have read through the grooming report from the Home Office.

Here, in this thread, I will take you through the mathematical hoops they have jumped through in this deeply flawed analysis.

Thread 👇

It is, quite literally, a whitewash. It uses all the standard statistical tricks to avoid concluding a stark and glaring conclusion, which is otherwise plain to see. That there was a sustained, targeted and focussed attack by Pakistani men on white working class and Sikh girls.

**Choose limited data points**

One way to force a conclusion is to only range over a small and carefully chosen set of data points. In this case, the report used a limited number of use cases which largely ignored the high profile grooming gangs of Pakistani origin.

Only Rotherham was considered in earnest, as it could hardly be ignored as the start of it all.

A typical data trick is to only use one troublesome dataset - generally the most high profile one. This gives plausible denial on accusations of manipulation of source data.

_This is what we call “the domain trick”_

1/x The market continues to try & shake out weak hands from overextended positioning by both HF & Retail...After a strong Vanna run up overnight, as expected, retail exuberance exploded on the open in the form of retail call buying, this fragility, paired w/a)Mean reverting flows

2/x from pinned Index Vol b) well documented, risk parity rebalancing flows & c) selling flows tied to bank EOY liquidity constraints. In combination, these flows have together have amounted to substantive selling pressures, strong enough to counteract the positive vanna/ charm

3/x flows, & point to continued likely index RVol an IVol pinning...Historically, the week of quarterly OpEx markets are notoriously volatile intraday, but also mean reverting like we saw today. I think it is fair to expect continued IVol compression & more of the same underlying

4/x chop. Vanna/Charm flows will lose their oomph after Wed 12/16 vixperation morning. There’s a window of weakness which I’ve spoken to for a month that falls 12/16-12/23. That could open a brief window that could lead to revaluation of the real risk & short interest,post 1/6...

5/x but the overwhelming 10k 🦍 of index Vol compression should still hold any correction in time & price in check in the shortterm and it’ll be hard to have anything blow up too bad in SPX land given how cheap & abundant Xmas Vol is 12/23-12/24. NTM, a stim deal & potential Fed

‼️𝗦𝗖𝗔𝗠/𝗙𝗥𝗔𝗨𝗗/𝗖𝗢𝗡
So there is a self proclaimed successful business woman that started her business ventures at 15 y/o with $5 (=8000Tsh🤡) as per 2013 exchnange rate, now in 2020 she is 22 y/o and allegedly revenues millions of dollars from her many businesses

She claims to have had 25 businesses, yes 25 businesses but now only has 7 that are running successfully 24/7 earning her millions of dollars in revenue.

I have no doubt that she has been hustling with a lot but that does not legitimise any of those hustles as most were shady.

Call me a hater/jealous/poor/broke or whatever but I know a scammy business when I see one and my concern is not a personal matter against her but rather people who fall for the rags to riches story and therefore pay her for business mentoring/wealth management

The following are just few among many red flags about this person's businesses, I welcome any others to contribute in this thread however they want but just keep it respectful.

🚩 Stealing photos from the Internet and editing her name on them for her Ad campaigns, branding them as if they were her actual products and projects while they're not. You source most of her posts just by a Google image search . And they have nothing to do with her.

🚨🚨🚨 ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨🚨🚨

@AyannaPressley Unveils Historic Federal Job Guarantee

The resolution draws on historical Civil Rights leaders like Coretta Scott King & economists like Sadie Alexander, & is supported by a wide coalition including @policylink, @NatlJobsForAll, @thepublicmoney, @SEIU, @sunrisemvmt, @CPDAction, @ACREcampaigns, @ourmoneyus, @NelpNews

“It’s time to establish a legal right to a job for all people in America. For years, we have legislated hate, harm & injustice ... It’s long past time to pursue bold, intentional policies that affirm equity & recognize the dignity & humanity of all people.”

"A federal job guarantee is an important investment in the American people, our communities, & an equitable economy that works for all. It affirms the right to meaningful, dignified work & a living wage."

"I’m proud to build upon & honor the legacy & work of generations of Black women Civil Rights leaders by introducing this historic resolution.”

I keep hearing people complain that the ‘mainstream media’ does not understand economics and that we’re talked down to as if everything must be explained as if the economy is a household. In this thread I explain all you (and they) need to know. Economics in one thread then....

Very few people seem to understand how money is created. Mainly that’s because when they’re told it seems so simple that they can’t believe something that’s so important that we’re willing to pay a lot to get it is created so easily. This thread explains how money is created.

What this thread also explains is that if we understand money we can completely reimagine how the economy really works, which is the pathway to rebuilding from the mess we are in. Which makes this a pretty big deal. I make no apology for its length as a result.

Let’s start at the very beginning. A person goes into a bank and asks for a £1,000 loan. The bank checks them out, and agrees. And that is all that it takes to create new money. Money is just a promise to pay. That simple exchange of promises is all it takes to create it.

Most people think there must be something that backs up the value of money. Gold, most likely. But there isn’t. Money is just a promise to pay, and has been for almost 50 years now. Mutual promises to pay creates all the money we have.

As some will have noted, there were a lot of reports yesterday on the fact that £50 billion of banks notes are missing in the UK economy. This got me thinking. And as a result I have to suggest that finding that £50 billion of cash would not be hard. Here’s how to do it.

As the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons has noted, around £50 billion of banknotes in issue have no explained use. In other words, they do not appear to be used for regular cash transactions. What their alternative use might be is not known.

Some could be in the possession of tourists, who have not bothered to exchange them on leaving the country. But the amounts involved would be small.

A bigger sum might be cash savings under the proverbial mattress. This is entirely plausible. It is possible that some of this will be related to benefit fraud: the amount of savings a person has can have a significant impact on their ability to claim a number of benefits.

There is no doubt that a significant part of this money Is used within the shadow economy. That can cover activity where tax is evaded, of course. But it also includes drug dealing and many forms of human trafficking and abuse.

🚨🇬🇧🇪🇺💄👠👗💅🏻🕺💃🇪🇺🇬🇧🚨
UK’s £35bn fashion industry warns of “decimation” from #brexit - big names sign open letter to @BorisJohnson urging action. Many of 50,000 SMEs on the rack due to VAT, customs and work permit issues. Stay with me/1


You can read the full text of the letter here, co-ordinated by Fashion Round Table @FashionRoundTab, but tl;dr it says that #Brexit has left a "gaping hole" in an industry that relies of free movement of professionals. It's a familiar cry /2



@FashionRoundTab The industry, already whacked by #COVID19, is now discovering that cross-border sales are a horror (VAT, Customs, long delays) and models, stylists, photographers that used to blat around Europe can't any more. They need permits, for themselves, for their gear /3

It is on one level amazing that this is only just fully dawning - as the musician industry found out recently - but fashion is not just big names and big companies. It's actually a mountain of small companies and sole traders often that feed into a huge (£35bn) industry /4

I've written about fashion models issue before (they need tier-5 sponsorship visas) and how that will erode London's status as a hub, but this goes so much wider than this - hence the #dontmakefashionhistory campaign - and comes down the lack of a mobility chapter in the deal /5

Window dressing: : the act or an instance of making something appear deceptively attractive or favorable

Tens of thousands of of businesses shut down, economy in shambles, windows showing abandoned stores and restaurant are staring at you ugly when you are passing by. Now the same leftists responsible for this disaster think they found a solution to fix the ugliness they created.

This is the solution our Dem leaders have chosen to remedy the scars they created and the livelihoods they destroyed: apply some make-up. Make art installations in the windows of the abandoned stores and restaurants. Apply propaganda lipstick on the leftist pig and call it "art"

God forbid our leftist betters who run our cities would have thought of stopping this closure madness and helping people go back to work, re-opening stores and restaurants. That's not what they want. They want you to stay at home, afraid and dependent on their hand-outs.

In Socialist Romania during the years of the Ceausescu regime they did pretty much the same thing, only they didn't call it "art". The grocery stores and butcher shops were always empty, there was no food anywhere other that on the black market.

Long rant: So earlier today, I got into a spat over the $15 minimum wage with @JamesSurowiecki and @noamscheiber. Because this disagreement over whether there is a mechanical relationship between raising wages and less jobs is incredibly consequential, I wanted to say more.

Interpretation of Financial Statements - preliminary filters.

1. Looking for sustainable competitive advantage:

When looking for sustainable moat, you wanna see consistency - in earnings, in having low debt, in having growing earnings, low spending in capital expenditures, etc.

The longer the company has existed, and if it sells you the same product for years (like Coca Cola), it reduces production costs and other costs (R&D, Training, marketing) slowly as the company ages.

When costs are reduced, margins and profits increase.

2. What to look for in an income statement:

Let's take a look at Apple:

i) You want to see earnings grow at a steady pace. Take a look at the net income below.

ii) Another thing that's important is a consistent and high gross margin.

As a thumb rule, Warren Buffett wants to see a gross margin of around 40% or above.

Although not quite 40%, it's around that range with respect to Apple.

Compare this to Apple's competitors.

Samsung's gross margins are around similar range, highest being 45.7% in 2018, and Huawei had a gross margin of 38.6%.

🚨🚨 THREAD TIME 🚨🚨

let's talk about the differences between income, wealth, and class

tl;dr: income is earned, wealth is bought, and class is inherited

also hi friends, while on the topic of income, this work is my only source of it! times are tough and folks are really struggling, but if you have a couple extra bucks please consider sending a tip my way

💰 venmo rachel-kahn-5
💵 cashapp

INCOME is the amount of money a person makes from labor and investments

so if you work for 2,000 hours and are paid $40,000 in a year, that's income

OR if you have a $1,000,000 stock portfolio with a 5% return rate and cash out $40,000 of it, that's income too (fucked, right?)

WEALTH is the amount of capital you own

that could be owning a house and land worth $150,000

or owning a small business with $150,000 in assets

or owning $150,000 worth of stocks

wealth is the investments that are themselves accruing value

CLASS is about what you stand to inherit

in the united states we use a lot of weird doublespeak to avoid talking about the proletariat, the petit bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie directly

proletariat ~ working class
petit bourgeoisie ~ middle class
bourgeoisie ~ upper class

What happens with the limited volumes of food aid that are sent to Tigray?

Testimonies on aid to the war-affected Tigray &

Shire: 7 kg of wheat were required to sign for 15 kg. If they refused to sign for 15 kg they were denied the 7 kg

IDPs in Shire: Currently around 80 000 displaced Tigrayans in Shire, spread across three different schools

Addi Da’iro: “Residents were denied food aid after the inhabitants refused to appoint PP officials as administrators. The residents demanded the evacuation of Eritrean soldiers instead.”

Aksum: "I heard there have been food aid of 15 kg of grain per family, and only once. Neither I, nor my relatives have received aid. No idea about how many families received that 15 kg of food aid. How many days would that last? Who takes the rest? Of course, the Eritreans?”

Adwa: “Last time, they made us sign 15 kg while giving only 7 kg”.

1/ How to raise a real estate fund (and, ideally, avoid getting sued)

Have warned everyone it’s better to raise capital deal-by-deal, bc it’s easier to raise & bc it's better for the sponsor. Still, there’s interest in learning how to do a fund… so, here goes.

2/ Don’t think of doing this unless you have a record of successful deals, ideally mostly/all in the same asset class / strategy.

Remember: You will be asking LPs to invest in YOU; they need to feel like you know what you’re doing.

3/ Really helps to have a list of prospective LPs BEFORE you start your raise. The more high-quality leads you have, the more likely you are to succeed. (I built my list via my blog initially; now twitter leads predominate - see my bio.)

4/ Find an experienced attorney. Doesn’t need to be a huge, expensive firm, but you want someone who has done a lot of private offerings before. Don’t agree to a big fee yet… at first, you just want a few hrs of her time for advice.

5/ Find an experienced CPA. Ideally, your existing CPA has worked on a lot of private deals before. If not, get a new one. Prospective LPs need confidence that someone good is overseeing the bookkeeping and doing the tax prep.

1/ 2017 vs 2020 Economics

Whatever the many reasons for the coup. The aftermath has been an economic disaster. This is instructive, since Mugabe was a monumental failure in Economics.

I wish to stick to economic facts &figures. I restrict myself exclusively to GOZ & RBZ stats

2/
To be fair to Mnangagwa, as President he is fed a lot of misinformation & politically convenient gibberish by those closest to him & security clusters bent on personal enrichment than national well being.

I say this, because some of the issues are too simple to understand.

3/
Mnangagwa can never commit harakiri ( Japanese suicide by cutting one’s belly) if facts & figures were honestly presented to him. Yet we saw Mugabe commit harakiri. He died a sad death while his lieutenants are now in power. Where the lieutenants honest to Mugabe...

4/
Chinamasa was Mugabe’s finance Minister. Was he frank & honest? If so why would he benefit from Mugabe’s ouster? The same is true of Mugabe’s bureaucracy. Most benefitted from the coup. So we ask if they were honest with him during his reign?

ED suffers the same problem

5/
On Wallstreet, CEO’s are not protected from their critics & independent research. Often they rely entirely on this research & seek it out in developing their strategy.

Once, Patterson Timba kicked out an analyst from his investor briefing. Forgetting strategy is in critique

Thread – Why the Latest Pelosi-backed $2T Stimulus Bill Went Nowhere

1. The Dementiacrats have been holding more virus relief hostage in order to force Republicans to cave and vote for another $2T Dementiacrat porkulus bill instead.

2. Senate Dementiacrats have voted against the Republican’s $500B relief bill targeted at REAL PEOPLE (small business and the jobless) multiple times.

3. A $2T virus relief bill was ramrodded through by House Democrats in March through July when it was signed into law by the President. It contained junk that had nothing to do with virus relief but was the price that Republicans had to pay to get relief to suffering Americans.

4. Dementiacrat bill that San Fran Nan wants to push down our throats now contains $2T more of this crap, as well as relief directly targeted at Blue states to cover pension shortfalls and other past Dementiacrat mismanagement.

5. It’s no wonder why Republicans are telling her to “piss off” on the latest $2T porkulus bill.

Thread: Why Kenya and other countries are introducing Digital Taxes? Why now?

Now,the current tax laws & international tax framework (which dates back to the 1920s) was designed at a time when businesses were largely brick-and-mortar (physical stores).Then, it was unimagineable for a biz to operate in another country without some form of physical presence

Thus, in most countries, for a business to be pay corporate tax it has to have some form of nexus there (e.g. Kenya). Either it's registered here, or it's managed from here or it has what we call a permanent establishment (also implies some form of physical presence)

Fast forward to today, there are numerous companies that are able to operate in multiple countries without having any physical presence in those countries. Consider social media platforms or streaming services, with a device, connection & subscription you can access their service

...and they don't have to have any physical office or employees etc in Kenya for them to deliver the service to you. I mentioned above that to be subject to corporate tax here, a company would have to have some form of nexus here in Kenya, these companies, don't.

Lots of requests for a "step-by-step" guide to where we are with the EU-UK negotiations.

So here you go - short thread summarising the essential context & key points / issues:

1) UK formally left EU in January 2020 but entered a "transition period" during which nothing very much changed: meant to give time for negotiations over future EU-UK relationship in fields like trade and security; based on "Political Declaration" as agreed by Johnson Government

2) Political Declaration envisaged only distant EU-UK relationship: partly logical consequence of Theresa May's longstanding "red lines" on free movement etc; but also result of renewed political preference, by Johnson Government, for even more extreme "clean break Brexit"

3) But almost immediately after UK withdrawal, Johnson Government changed the goalposts in ways that can only be described as cynical, untrustworthy and reckless. Started by tearing up large parts of Political Declaration: even its distant ties were no longer distant enough...

4) ... & continued with new red lines / fresh demands reflecting Johnson's (frankly tedious) belief that UK should "have its cake and eat it". So: back to square one - yet UK refused extension to transition period, to give more time for negotiations - even after onset of pandemic