The Age of Recoupment
How power, technology, and opportunity have come together to gouge consumers

 black321 wrote:
So turning to the politics of climate change. It's well known that Republicans either flat out deny it or don't feel they need to do anything about it. Democrats on the other hand acknowledge the problem and for the most part want to pursue the fight to combat it. It's not a secret that insurance companies are running for the hills as evidence in the post below. So why aren't Democrats up on a stump pinning the insurance issue on Republicans? Hey local Joe, your insurance company just dropped you because there was a flood 10 miles from your home. Well you can blame your fellow Republican representative who is wasting your time and money fighting against gay people instead of taking the lead on climate change and the resulting problems it's causing that hits you, Joe, right in the wallet. Where are the ads? The social media memes etc. 

if you don’t believe in climate changec just talk to an insurance agent or claim adjuster. 

 rgio wrote:
Ironically, we get more "Acts of God" caused by humans.

An act of God is an uncontrollable event, such as a tornado, flood, or tsunami, not caused or controlled by humans.

---

NYT article below on archive.

 black321 wrote:
This is another example of people saying one thing and doing another.

Everyone is complaining about inflation and interest rates, yet the average price of a home in April is up 5.7% YOY, and buyers are complaining there is no inventory (an issue that's being driven a bit by people sitting on 3% mortgages who see no reason to move even though their homes are now bigger than they need).  The increase in prices at 7% interest works out to an extra $160/month on a 30-year loan.

Insurance costs are a problem (unless you're in the insurance business).  Hell, Warren Buffett just picked up $6B in Chubb stock on the QT, so besides running GEICO, he's doubling down on insurance company valuations.  If you want to hear some really shitty stories, go listen to the NY Times Podcast - The Daily.  The May 15 one was called "The Possible Collapse of the US Home Insurance System".  

It's got some interesting examples...here's the one I remembered when you posted about your wildfire issues (pulled the transcript from the NY Times... which I doubt you can get to outside the firewall).

I got into my rental car and drove about an hour northeast of Des Moines, through some rolling hills, to this lovely little town of Marshalltown. Marshalltown is a really cute, little Midwestern town with old homes and a beautiful courthouse in the town square. And when I drove through, I couldn’t help noticing all the roofs looked new.

Turns out Marshalltown, despite being a pastoral image of Midwestern easy living, was hit by two really bad disasters in recent years — first, a devastating tornado in 2018 and then, in 2020, what’s called a derecho, a straight-line wind event that’s also just enormously damaging. And the result was lots of homes in this small town got severely damaged in a short period of time. And so when you drive down, you see all these new roofs that give you the sense that something’s going on.

 A place that had previously seemed maybe safe from climate change, if there is such a thing, all of a sudden was not. So I found an insurance agent in Marshalltown —We talked to other agents but haven’t talked to many homeowners. He invited me to his office early one morning and said, come meet some people. And so I parked on a quiet street outside of his office, across the street from the courthouse, which also had a new roof, and went into his conference room and met a procession of clients who all had versions of the same horror story.

Speaker 1

It was more — well more of double.

Speaker 2

A huge reduction in coverage with a huge price increase.

Some people had faced big premium hikes.

Speaker 3

I’m just a little, small business owner. So every little bit I do feel.  I was with IMT Insurance forever. And then when I moved in 2020, Bobby said they won’t insure a pool.

Some people had gotten dropped.

Speaker 2

Where we used to see carriers canceling someone for frequency of three or four or five claims, it’s one or two now.

It's a problem that's going to get worse.  States all have funds to backstop insurers, but they don't have enough for something catastrophic.  Climate change is everywhere.  Beyond the fires and tornados and hurricanes, places that were generally immune have increasingly frequent problems. 

Last comment... adding to this problem is that we don't build anything to last.  We all grew up reciting the 3 little pigs, yet every house we build is made of sticks.  Older Americans have borrowed against the future while simultaneously spreading landmines.  The gifts that will keep on giving.  Good luck kids! 

 R_P wrote:

good point. I read a bloomberg piece that said if CPI had included home insurance inflation (not renters insurance) last year's inflation would have been up near another 1%.  
Obviously, this is a cost that is likely to continue to climb. 
ps., I live in a wildfire zone and got quotes from $4 - $9,000

 black321 wrote:
I've seen insurance mentioned a few times (incl. as taken out of some index in the 80s or so). Today:

Home Insurance Is Clobbering Consumers. Yet It’s Barely Counted as Inflation. *
Skyrocketing premiums are hitting homeowners hard, but they barely factor into common price measures.

Holly Meyer Lucas estimates that as many as 30 of the 100 houses her real estate team sold in and around Jupiter, Fla., last year were put on the market because their owners could no longer keep up with skyrocketing home insurance. (...)

Cue climate change and insurance.

Some interesting inflation data...if you strip out shelter from CPI, inflation was just 2.5% in 2023 and was 2.2% in Apr (YOY), meaning annualized inflation fell to closer to 2% or more less in line with what it was the past 3 decades. Since 65% of us own homes, shelter inflation has little impact (only renters or those who recent purchased a home). Similar story if you track PCE inflation. So, is the fed wrong to focus on inflation, when it has in fact normalized (w/o shelter)...needlessly punishing the economy? But if the fed dropped rates, that would push housing inflation even higher and also stimulate non-housing inflation?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...

 islander wrote:

I think this story shows how today we use data to create new "trends."  
People have been doing this for decades...and as for job satisfaction, I don't recall many of my generation "emotionally" attached to their job...or my father's generation for that matter.
I think the data seems to legitimize the way the "millennials" feel...whereas prior generations didnt think so much about it...they did the work to provide for their families....

 black321 wrote:

I know a couple of people who pursued this. These are above average individuals across the board. Both of them burned out on the process and bailed. One went back to corporate and is slogging along being very successful and has a nice jump start due to their savings, but they say it wasn't worth it. The other went rogue and lived the gypsy/nomad life, spent their way through their savings and they are now doing charity stuff in foreign lands and subsistence living financially. Neither of them thinks about retirement much.

Interesting...the strategy seems to be, limit your own consumption, but grow your portfolio value by investing in an economy entirely built on over consumption...hmmm

Playing with FIRE: How to quit work and retire in your 30s

Recent studies suggest that over half of millennials do not see themselves as 'emotionally and behaviourally' connected to their job and company. Exhausted from high-pressure jobs and with a growing sense of burnout, some millennials are following a personal finance strategy that allows them to quit the day job and retire decades early.

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video...

Current Shiller PE Ratio: 33.58 +0.32 (0.95%)11:02 AM EDT, Tue Apr 23

Mean:	17.11
Median:	15.98
Min:	4.78	(Dec 1920)
Max:	44.19	(Dec 1999)

Shiller PE ratio for the S&P 500.

https://www.multpl.com/shiller...

Freedom (and poverty) in Argentina: Milei’s 100 frenetic days in power and an unprecedented economic experiment *
The ultra-neoliberal policies of the new president threaten to dynamite the already weak foundations of the welfare state in the South American country

The Argentine president, a 53-year-old economist and TV panelist by profession, defines himself as a libertarian. He is a follower of the Austrian School, a school of thought founded by Carl Menger at the end of the 19th century, which places individual freedom as the basis of progress and maintains that the state should stay away from the economic decisions of individuals. “The state is a criminal organization,” Milei affirmed on March 1, in his opening speech to the 2024-2025 legislative session. This is the same message that made him popular as a talk show guest and on which he based his successful electoral campaign when he made the leap to politics. The difference is that, since December 10 of 2023, Milei is the leading representative of the very institutions he’s attacking.

The president admires the economist Murray Rothbard, of the Austrian School, to the point of naming one of his four dogs after him. The term “anarcho-capitalism” is attributed to Rothbard, who defended the total abolition of the state in favor of individual sovereignty.

Milei considers himself to be an anarcho-capitalist at heart, but a minarchist in practice: that is, he believes that state functions should be limited to justice and security. This explains why, some time ago, he was in favor of the sale of organs — and even the sale of children — and no restrictions on personal firearms. He dropped these ideas in the final months of the presidential campaign.

Milei’s doctrine is radical for any country — “I’m the first libertarian president in the world,” he likes to boast — but much more so in Argentina, where the state is one of the largest employers and the economy receives massive public investment. The resounding victory of a candidate who brandished a chainsaw as a symbol of cutting public spending was possible due to widespread fatigue with the traditional political class, after 12 years of economic stagnation and Argentines’ loss of purchasing power.

Dr. Doom Strikes Again.

Interesting, albeit one-sided discussion from Roubini, a/k/a Dr. Doom. 
A central tenet of his argument is higher inflation and interest rates, although at least recently we have seen both come down.

Economic and financial threats are rising and interacting in volatile ways with social, political, environmental and technological challenges

Since the publication of Megathreats in October 2022, the themes I emphasized have gone mainstream. Everyone now acknowledges that economic, monetary and financial threats are rising and interacting in dangerous ways with various other social, political, geopolitical, environmental, health and technological developments.

Hence, in December 2022, the Financial Times chose “polycrisis” as one of its buzzwords of the year. Whatever one’s preferred term (others have adopted “permacrisis” or “confluence of calamities”), there is growing recognition that not only the global economy but also human survival is at risk.

As I warned in Megathreats, the “Great Moderation” (a long period of low macroeconomic volatility following the mid-1980s) has given way to the “Great Stagflation.” In 2022, we witnessed a surge of inflation in advanced economies and emerging markets, a sharp slowdown of global growth that continued into 2023, and signs of severe private- and public-sector debt problems as central banks raised policy rates to stabilize prices.

You’re not imagining things: The end of the ‘everything bubble’ has made the world more dangerous (msn.com)

YOLO stimulus funds about to run dry....with election season ramping up, when are we going to get another round or another tax cut? We all know deficits don't matter...but don't consumers also need to cut their consumption because we need to save the environment? 


According to Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel, the U.S. economy appears to be “progressing smoothly, with a resilient consumer impervious to the impact of higher borrowing costs.”

These spenders are the “YOLO (you only live once) consumers” who, Siegel believes, are spending the last of their cash reserves on traveling and enjoying the summer.

However, the Russell E. Palmer professor emeritus of finance warned that this could signal “the last good stretches for the economy before the summer ends and credit card bills come due.” He added that in the past, when students return to school in September and October, this has previously made for some “dicey periods for the markets.”

Professor Siegel also issued a warning to the Fed, to which he has previously appealed to pause rate hikes. The finance and economics expert said it would be a “mistake” for the Fed to wait until it saw a downturn in the jobs market before it began easing rate hikes.

Billionaire investor Bill Gross has also said he believes the coffers of American consumers will run dry by the end of the year. The Wall Street titan reportedly worth $2.6 billion tweeted Monday: “4 trillion of COVID spending still dripping into economy with consumers still spending their last $500 billion or so. The trick is when to time the end of it. Fourth quarter is the best guess. 

Economics v. the Earth: New Book Explores the History of a Tense Relationship

(...) In their new book, Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis, historians Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind warn that capitalist societies will have to overhaul the way we interact with the planet in order to avoid unthinkable consequences. They trace the key economic concept of scarcity as it developed over five hundred years of European thought, showing how a particular interpretation helped bring us to the trouble we’re facing.

The relationship between the economy and nature has been considered by thinkers all the way back to Aristotle. But as Jonsson and Wennerlind show, the topic gained center stage in the seventeenth century in the form of a new enthusiasm for controlling nature. During this period, thinkers like Francis Bacon spread the notion that with the help of science, humanity could bring nature under control and force it to yield its riches. The sky was no longer the limit of our desires.

The authors divide historical views of scarcity into two camps. “Cornucopians” like Bacon held that nature could be mastered to satisfy boundless human wants – a position that found its way to dominance in the West by the end of the 19^th century, most recently promoted by neoclassical economists. As Jonsson and Wennerlind see it, economists under the sway of cornucopianism came to believe in a “dream of infinite substitutability” whereby natural resources were always available, and if something grew scarce, no problem — a substitute could be found. For example, if rainforests vanished, the price of goods associated with them would increase, thus lowering demand and sparking innovation to yield substitutes.

The authors outline how over the last century, most mainstream economists have been selling the idea that what we need to do is to use natural resources efficiently and develop science and technology to maximize economic growth. The basic premise: more is almost always desirable, the cheaper the better, and we can have it all without destroying the planet. The magic of market forces would take care of any environmental problems.

The authors liken this fantasy to the fervent visions of progress among 17th-century alchemists.

Jonsson and Wennerlind refer to a second group of ideas about scarcity as the “Finitarian” tradition, focused on limits to power over nature and the need to rein in human desires. While Cornucopians pictured the economy as the engine of the endless growth of wants, Finitarians asked, what about simplicity? A meaningful life? Liberation from desire? And by the way, what about living in balance with nature?

The authors note that Finitarianism was the dominant worldview of sixteenth-century Neo-Aristotelians, a perspective that later found expression in a variety of movements, such as Romanticism. When they thought about the economy and nature, Romantics tended to emphasize living within the limits of nature as the foundation of a healthy society. They saw the Cornucopian focus on ever-rising material standards of living as missing much of what makes human life worth the journey: community, artistic expression, imagination, spirituality, and work that is not soul-crushing. (...)

Michael Hudson: A New Bipolar World. US finance capitalism vs. China's mixed public/ private economy

'The Big Myth' exposes the costs of blind faith in free markets

 black321 wrote:

People who didn’t own slaves, in a state that didn’t condone slavery, paying money to people who weren’t slaves.
Folks who even start a thought like this do so much damage to our culture by stoking the embers of intolerance and anger and fear.

Tis the season?


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A controversial draft reparations proposal that includes a $5 million lump-sum payment for each eligible Black person could make San Francisco the first major U.S. city to fund reparations, though it faces steep financial headwinds and blistering criticism from conservatives.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/san...