2016 Democratic National Convention - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - July 25-28

[Skroe]

Doesn't Putin have 150,000 heavily armed guards, food tasters, every doctor in the country and can bodyslam bears? I don't see him dying anytime soon.

I'm not thinking so much unfortunately boating accident as old fashioned heart attack or aggressive cancer.

I mean look at Hugo Chavez. Couldn't have happened to a better guy.

Although there would be poetic justice to it if Putin came down with Polonium poisoning.

[Masark]

Some food for thought. Putin is 63 years old. He is not preparing for a successor or a succession system. Russian male life expectancy is 64. When he die in the next decade or so, the edifice collapses.

I'd say Putin is likely to last significantly longer than that, given that AFAIK, he doesn't have an alcohol problem and that's one of the main things dragging down their life expectancy, along with their smoking rate (which I don't think he does either), and their crime rate (again, something he's largely unaffected by).

Though the result in still the same, regardless of whether it happens in 10 years or 20 years.

[Felya]

Russian's seem immune to pain and I think the collective national pastime is suffering. Nothing brings the Russians together like misery.

Don't confuse loyalty with suffering. Russian history is built on suffering due to loyalty. This will say more about misery... Our wedding music, isn't a funeral march..

https://youtu.be/aPfeOAhDfbM

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Not really relevant to the topic, but mortality rates in Russia are fairly startling.

The male life expectancy is 64... Retirement is 65...

[TITAN308]

Has this one been posted yet? I admit, I laughed.

*snipped*

Infracted - Minor Spam

[ringpriest]

Its worth remembering that our economy is pretty stable and resilient. For the feds to cause a serious problem requires some serious table flipping....like throwing out trade deals left and right.

Nothing in Clinton's platform could be reasonably claimed to do anything worse than maybe slow growth.

It's not Clinton's particular (or party) platform that I'm worried about - it's underlying instabilities that we've been papering over with spit and baling wire for so long that we've all gotten used to pretending that they don't exist, but that are potentially vulnerable to positive feedback and will have systemic knock-on effects if they do go 'boom'. Think the 2007-
2008 financial crisis, repeated multiple times: in everything from consumer debt, to the Treasury (the Republicans let the US default to spite Hillary), to domestic ripple effects from war overseas, to the various bubbles, and that's before getting into unknown unknowns and black swans.

My personal thought is that a year (or two) from now, the economic winners will be those who were very liquid, very diversified, and very, very well-hedged. Hopefully I'm wrong, and some sort of steady growth (slow or otherwise) is the order of the day for the near future.

[Felya]

My personal thought is that a year (or two) from now, the economic winners will be those who were very liquid, very diversified, and very, very well-hedged. Hopefully I'm wrong, and some sort of steady growth (slow or otherwise) is the order of the day for the near future.

I'm not big into stock market, but we had the largest spike in history during Obama's term for the Dow. It is feeling very much like a bubble, but there is nothing singular to point at. When IT bottomed out, it was so obvious, Simpsons had an episode predicting it. Same thing with housing bubble. There were people warning of it back in 2004. Right now, I don't see anything obvious. Other than the unsustainable nature of being the top consumer, while not equally as dominant manufacturer. That's the scary bubble...

[ringpriest]

If the trump train doesn't make it to the white house we rebuild the gop for the next 4 years while maintaining control of congress. It's not so big of a loss if he throws his chances. What i find strange is the media keeps saying it's close and every bookmaker has clinton at about 70% chance of winning. I'm still baffled why the DNC would be so idiotic to not bother to have their servers checked every 6 months or so. Especially after the white house, nsa etc had breaches happen. Such a reckless regard for even their own privacy. So loud mouthed yankee took the bait and we'll never be able to ask the question of what outside of what was released to wikileaks is there to worry about?

Presuming he does lose... what does "rebuild the GOP" mean in this context? (And who is "we"?) Are Trump supporters going to remain engaged and effective while their cult leader spends his time sulking and issuing rants about his enemies via tweet? Are they going to do the tiring grunt work of winning local Congressional races? Who is going to fund a Trump-flavored Republican party? (You can virtually guarantee that Trump will not be cutting checks for any races that do not have his name at the top of the ticket.) And the Trumpublicans don't control Congress: it's a mix of "big-money", religious fundamentalist, and tea-party office holders, none of whom are going to be supporting anything that reeks of "loser Trump".

Or are you talking about the non-Trump chunk of the GOP (which will, of course, grow by leaps and bounds if/when he is defeated)? Four years aren't going to cut it - win or lose, Trump is going to me an albatross-shaped millstone around the neck of the metaphorical elephant for a decade or more. And unless he wins and is successful in some fashion (or loses precisely right) the GOP is going to need to spend years rebuilding what he's cost them.

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I'm not big into stock market, but we had the largest spike in history during Obama's term for the Dow. It is feeling very much like a bubble, but there is nothing singular to point at. When IT bottomed out, it was so obvious, Simpsons had an episode predicting it. Same thing with housing bubble. There were people warning of it back in 2004. Right now, I don't see anything obvious. Other than the unsustainable nature of being the top consumer, while not equally as dominant manufacturer. That's the scary bubble...

Yeah... I can't prove anything, or I'd be writing a book and putting my money into options, it's just my thought on what patterns look like. US household spending is up as is debt, but income is still down. There's a global shipping slowdown. Total oil production is down, but so are prices, indicating issues with demand. Bond markets are doing some very odd things, there's a lot of big sick banks (particularly in the EU), China's real economy remains opaque... and that before we get into the possibilities for armed conflict or political upheaval around the globe, or the ever-worsening impact of global warming. It feels precarious.

[Orbitus]

Politicians have been doing this for ages. Hell just days after Reagan left the presidency he went to Japan and got paid millions of dollars (which was a much bigger deal 30 years ago) and the Republicans have basically canonized him. I don't understand why this is now a major issue.

Yet, I bet he doesn't care about Trump's taxes because he is a hypocrite.

[Theodarzna]

It's not Clinton's particular (or party) platform that I'm worried about - it's underlying instabilities that we've been papering over with spit and baling wire for so long that we've all gotten used to pretending that they don't exist, but that are potentially vulnerable to positive feedback and will have systemic knock-on effects if they do go 'boom'. Think the 2007-
2008 financial crisis, repeated multiple times: in everything from consumer debt, to the Treasury (the Republicans let the US default to spite Hillary), to domestic ripple effects from war overseas, to the various bubbles, and that's before getting into unknown unknowns and black swans.

My personal thought is that a year (or two) from now, the economic winners will be those who were very liquid, very diversified, and very, very well-hedged. Hopefully I'm wrong, and some sort of steady growth (slow or otherwise) is the order of the day for the near future.

When in doubt, bet on black, things will be worse not matter what.

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I'm not big into stock market, but we had the largest spike in history during Obama's term for the Dow. It is feeling very much like a bubble, but there is nothing singular to point at. When IT bottomed out, it was so obvious, Simpsons had an episode predicting it. Same thing with housing bubble. There were people warning of it back in 2004. Right now, I don't see anything obvious. Other than the unsustainable nature of being the top consumer, while not equally as dominant manufacturer. That's the scary bubble...

I think in general, with each new public we get better and better at denying bubbles are forming. Not we as in the general public but typically those profiting heavily from the status quo.

[stomination]

Politicians have been doing this for ages. Hell just days after Reagan left the presidency he went to Japan and got paid millions of dollars (which was a much bigger deal 30 years ago) and the Republicans have basically canonized him. I don't understand why this is now a major issue.

Most of the time its after they retire from being a politician.

[akris15]

Yet, I bet he doesn't care about Trump's taxes because he is a hypocrite.

Yes Trump should release his taxes (especially after he called Romney for it) but because its basically a prerequisite for being president now.