zeke5123
2yr ago
It just seems so obvious that VBM introduces so many problems I dont know why so many people support it (eg no chain of custody, return of machine politics). Is it just because Dems think it gives them an advantage?
zeke5123
2yr ago
There are basically two kinds of cluster headaches: episodic and chronic. The former someone gets ever 3-6 months and they last for a weekish. Sucks but manageable. Can’t imagine the second kind where the relief is infrequent.
zeke5123
2yr ago
I don’t have a link to the ADP. I remember seeing the beats when they come out.
Re 2 and 3, show that historically we often see these kinds of beats in something as important to markets as unemployment numbers. Until then I think multiple multiple sigma beats to the upside (followed by uniform revision downward adjustments of prior month) is suggestive of something.
Re 4 had trouble finding the paper but here is a Forbes link discussing it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2022/12/23/upon-further-review-that-hot-labor-market-is-really-ice-cold/?sh=23befc8c72b5
zeke5123
2yr ago
I guess it depends on what you mean by low rate environment. I tend to think pre financial crisis rates aren’t low.
zeke5123
2yr ago
The extreme micro isn’t happening.
And the PE success over the last ten years was cheap debt but PE has been successful for many years before cheap debt. KKR, BX, Warburg, etc have been around for a long time.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Yeah it may be cultural different. In the US, there is still hustle culture.
Also PE now often offers 5-10% mgmt equity so still incentivizes mgmt.
zeke5123
2yr ago
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ADP is a payroll company. They put out numbers. The numbers generally are close to BLS because well ADP is the primary payroll provider in the US. About a year ago, there started to be a pretty big divergence.
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Some of the beats were something like six sigma. It is weird to have that many very large sigma events on one data source.
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Yes of course things aren’t independent. My suggestion is it isn’t independent because the BLS is cooking the books.
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There are two data points BLS puts out. The first is establishment survey which goes into unemployment number. The second is the household survey. Granted, the latter is measuring something slightly different. But historically these two surveys end up with total number of employed that are very similar. There has been a large difference for about 1.5 years since BLS started aggressively applying adjustment to establishment. The household correlates very well with street expectations. The Philly fed even put out a paper on this. Again, this suggests the establishment is being manipulated. Latest household suggests we are in recession range for jobs.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Therapy culture. Not all therapy. But also I think your assumption is people can either be emotional or bottle up emotions. Stoicism is another path.
zeke5123
2yr ago
I wonder what the overlap is between liking therapy and believing in other hokum (eg astrology, acupuncture).
zeke5123
2yr ago
I actually think PE provides value. It provides an exit for entrepreneurs especially when they can’t go public. Let’s say you build a 100m business but are getting close to retirement and your kids aren’t all that interested in building it or you have business you want to start? PE provides an exit to those kind of business starters likely increasing business formation.
zeke5123
2yr ago
PE also benefits from leverage. The simple truth is that it is easier to leverage a business than portfolio stock since you control cash flow meaning that PE can get outsized returns due to leverage.
zeke5123
2yr ago
The further down the scale the more the cost for diligence relative to acquisition goes up.
I do wonder if the next move though is for mid tier PE to go micro but do a lot of bolt ins to create a company of size that can then be flipped to a larger PE. Would require a longer hold compared to average. And to reduce costs you probably don’t finance your first few transactions and then when you go to purchase more add ons you fully finance those (since you can get the bank comfortable the existing portco can support the debt)
zeke5123
2yr ago
Therapy culture is very blue coded. Therapy culture seemingly embraces fragility as a virtue.
zeke5123
2yr ago
To be clear, this implies things like truancy laws are illegitimate. Not saying that’s a checkmate but making sure I understand your position.
zeke5123
2yr ago
What limits do you put on parents on raising their kids? For example, should John be able to bring Johnny to a strip club? What if John is 16? 12?
We can iterate but that’s the basic question.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Finally, the "but Palestinians have bad views on x, why do you support them," is a bad argument, because as progressives, we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government. Only letting people with the right views (or the right amount of land ownership) is the reactionary view.
How do you square this with massive support by democrats for government censorship.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Well inflation is still pretty hot compared to most of the 2010s and it is hot on a much higher base.
zeke5123
2yr ago
Reasons for skepticism:
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For a while, the numbers differed material from ADP’s numbers until ADP figured out the adjustment BLS was making. Generally you’d expect these numbers to be somewhat similar but BLS was running materially different and hot for awhile. So it wasn’t just the difference but the consistent direction of the difference.
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Job numbers continue to surprise the market to the upside sometimes beating expectations by multiple sigmas. That shouldn’t statistically happen MoM unless something screwy is happening with the numbers.
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I forget how many consecutive months there was a downward adjustment to the numbers but it was a number of months. Curious again the uniform direction.
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The establishment and household departed pretty drastically.
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Given what we’ve seen the last five years about DC bureaucracy why should we assume the BLS is different?
zeke5123
2yr ago
Perhaps but L&E ended up rather accurately “backing into” common law rules that evolved over time. It definetly made me think “this framework is prettt strong”
zeke5123
2yr ago
Does it matter? The claim is the economy is doing great so why do people say otherwise. Well this explains the otherwise.
You don’t know who had the ballot prior to it arriving at the voting station (assuming the ballot ever arrives)!
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