Ok, so the jobless claims lucked out two weeks on a row and seemed low due to statistical noise, I bet they were very high again yesterday, right? As they should be since steve229 says we are on the verge of economic collapse.
How about the US GDP number? I bet it's like way less than 1.0% now maybe even negative with all the gloom and doom and always expert alias here. Anyone catch the actual read just so I know how bad it really is?
What are stock market futures saying this morning? Doesn't the market listen to geniuses like steve229 about Hiw fucked we are? WTH is going on?
Doesn't the market even listen to people who write in The Economist? I just can't figure out what is going on. Steve229 sure knows his shit after all. Just like txtittyfan did!
I do know this, gas prices where I live are 30-40 cents less than a month ago. In fact, they've dropped over the last two months. I have no idea if lower gas prices are connected or not to other aspects of the economy.
They are. Some companies will be fucked, but it is good overall. Well that's what I think but maybe steve229 can pull up an article from The Economist which will "prove" otherwise.
We are doomed! DOOMED!
ZeroHedge is blog with an excellent track record of market, economic, and political prognostications. A real goto place for information for the likes of none other than The System inventor RickyBoy, for instance. Maybe RickyBoy can let us now how they are interpreting things this morning. Oh wait, one does not actually to read them to know that. :-)
Lol! Chicago PMI out yet? Bet it will be a disaster after all of steve229's prognostications!
Nikkei futures halted because they are limit up? Where is steve229 to explain what that even means and how it can happen after that expert analysis on Japan he quoted from The Economist. Guy sure, atypically, has little to say this morning. What's up with that?
Gas prices are tied to oil prices and the supply is exceeding demand at present. Normally this would lead to decreased production but the North American supply will not stop because of employment concerns and the Mid East and OPEC nations are being pressured to continue by our government. That and their inter country "you blink first" stand off. All of this hurts Russia as well as other nonaligned oil based budgets . Low gas prices and Russia's economy collapsing are good things. The last time Russia was squeezed on oil prices the Wall came down and Reagan was re-elected. As far as the economy collapsing, I am heavily invested and things look good at present. I just returned from overseas and did pretty well against the EURO. As long as the USA economy beats all the others it will be okay.
The way I heard it was that gas prices are down because demand is down in China, and OPEC can't lower production fast enough (for reasons having to do with their own economy) to prevent a temporary glut.
The cure for low prices is..........low prices; just as the cure for high prices is..........high prices.
I sold the oil part of my company last spring; not so much because I expected the crash in crude prices but more because I needed a pile of cash for the nat gas exploration play in northern Canada
I have lived through many of these price cycles in this industry and the resolution is always the same. High cost producers get driven out of the market and low cost producers expand, in anticipation of the next price surge.
Unless the fracers that are ripping up the Bakken in North Dakota and Saskatchewan can get their costs under $70/bbl all that Bakken crude will disappear from the market. What happens to WTI when 1,500,000bbl/day goes away? Or when 2,000,000bbl/day of tar sands crude vanishes?.
I am not gloom and doom on the economy. But it isn't solid by any means. You also have to realize that it is election time. Things some how magicly always seem good when elections roll around. It is funny how that happens...(insert throw up icon). But we are on wobbling lets right now. Like farmer said... what happens if these places can't get the barrel of crude down... prices will go up or if they don't sell it jobs will dry up.
Also think about if Minimum wages go up in the USA.... What do you think that will do for cost of goods??? Because if the grocery store has to pay an extra $2 an hour for working, so does the delivery trucks, so do the people who pack the delivery trucks, so does the people who make the product or pick the fruit, etc. You see the issue. Now it is a totally different topic. But I also understand that people can't live off of minmum wages alone. So it is a double edge sword.
An economic restructuring? Now yes, that would be something. The 1936 Social Security Act was a type of restructuring. It remains a high water mark too.
But just more business activity? Lower joblessness rate? No, this is just another bubble, more speculative gambits, and there will still be even more people hurting DURING an upturn because the cost of living will go up.
This "whorification" of the strip clubs is not going to diminish, it will increase.
Though this will mean more and nicer P4P, this does not mean that we are building a better world. Quite the contrary.
Richard Wolff kpfa.org
SJG
Lol!
*** SLAM DUNKED THAT FAGGOT STEVE229 ***
@che,
"BTW Putin doesn't give a flying fuck about the price of oil."
That is complete and utter balderdash. Russia is probably more dependent on the price of oil than any other country in the world (save for perhaps Iran). The price of production matters nothing to Putin but the price he receives for each barrel of oil sold for $US is the lifeblood of the Russian economy. Reduce the number of $US entering Russia and you stop the Russian economy in its tracks. Russia is now part of the consumer economy. Its citizens (the sober ones) are accustomed to the delights of the consumer economy. Russia itself has lost most of its industrial base and is not yet capable of manufacturing acceptable consumer products for its restive population.
Even the Russian military is dependent on western manufacturers. Russia can't build state of the art high tech ships for its own navy; it purchases them from places like France, for example. Even now, Russia is incapable of feeding its own population. Oil provides the hard currency used to buy food for its people. And, the hard currency is necessary. The ruble is not convertible. As the Russian economy implodes with this decline in oil prices Putin can print as many rubles as he wishes so the Russian people can buy the every decreasing output of the Russian economy and the ever declining number of imports. The consequences of that happy event are self-evident.
No, comrade che, Putin is shitting bricks the size of Kremlin onion domes as he watches the price of oil plummet.
Check out a chart of the ruble this year:
Their central bank did another rate hike to try and slow the full.
If Putin isn't concerned about falling oil prices the markets for rubles and Russian equities certainly are. Is he willing to take the hit if he thinks it does more harm to his enemies? Stalin would have. Does he have that strong a grip on power? All that for a shithole like Ukraine?
I think it's getting close to the point where the markets force him to back off.
I, for one, love this time of year. World Series, Halloween, and harvest time. No matter what the economics of the world might be, for some unknown reason, pussy and weed still seem to sell.
^^^ v true!
On the front page of today's San Jose Mercury News they explain that Governor Jerry Brown is touting jobs growth, but the poor are not benefiting from this, lagging behind.
We have an ever growing underclass, people relegated to untouchable types of on again and off again labor.
As I read this forum, it sounds like this "whorification" of our strip clubs happened during the early and mid 90's. Well this was exactly the time of the Clinton bubble, when they were bragging about how low the joblessness rate was, about as low as it had ever been since the 1960's. This supposed boom was feeding the growth of UHM strip clubs!
Why would this be? It is the same reason that the speculative bubble of the 1920's fed the growth of speak easys and organized crime. You will have some people raking in lots of money, the beneficiaries of the bubble. But you will have others being hurt by the rises in the cost of living, and others who are just completely on the side lines.
What is happening in our country now though goes even beyond this. A large segment of the population is being forced into progressively worse grades of employment.
Day after the 2000 election telephone interview with President Bill Clinton, click on "audio" to listen to it, it starts about 1/2 way through the show. democracynow.org
James Carville says about the continual erosion in the inflation adjusted wages of working men, "There is no line of women wanting to get married to guys who can't pay the bills."
So what you have is more and more young women seeing that they have no future. So whereas prostitution has often been a second career for women, now more and more it is becoming a first career. Another bubble will only increase this trend. More guys with bucks to lure them in, plus ever increasing uncertainty if they decline.
Once a bubble breaks, it is just about impossible to do anything which would prevent the collapse. But what each of us can do every single day of the week is to stop supporting the formation of bubbles in the first place. Stop boosting for them ourselves. Stop believing the hype. Stop going along with it.
Unfortunately those who work in Finance are Real Estate make their money by promoting bubbles, and by leading people to believe that no price is too high, as it will always go higher.
One benefit of our UHM SC's and this "whorification" is that it gives some lovely young women a way out of the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate industries. ( FIRE ). So lets support them and keep them in high heels and makeup. I don't want to see them in power suits and sensible shoes.
SJG
Three Dog Night youtube.com
I think your history is a little off, SJG. Around the peak of the internet bubble strippers were making a killing w or w.o. doing extras. So not many did them. Whorification did not get going in full earnest until the late-mid 2000s. It was a confluence of factors including economic. IMO, the confluence peak out just recently and things will getting worse from the monger's perspective going forward. Of course, there will always be some available but the very easiest off it is probably behind us now. I don't think it will get as lopsided in the dancers favor as around 2000 since factors beyond economic have changed, but the easiest of was probably 2007 to mid 2014.
If girls can make huge bucks not doing extras as opposed to a bit more by doing them I think it's pretty obvious which most are Going to choose.
And, yes, I think the come economic boom over the next 20-30y will surpass the 1990s internet boom. Might see the euro worth less than 1 USD soon.
We have an economic system which is broken, and seriously so. Sure, if I worked in the finance sector, I'd be boosting for a 30y boom too.
There will be bubbles, booms and busts. But I can't see SC's going back, as with each boom and bust, more people are left without, and the US moves further and further in the direction of being a 3rd world country.
SJG
Hold on a minute! You seem to think that extras increased at least in part due to the economy worsening. But according to steve229's infallible economic reasoning, worse economy = less demand = fewer girls willing to supply them. How could the number possibly go up? So since it has that must mean the economy has been getting better, contrary to steve saying it is not. Guess her argument isn't even internally consistent. But I'm not surprised that would be a challenge way over her head!
I do not think that extras increased do to the worsening economy. I think our economic system is broken. This is very different from just saying where we are on the current boom versus bust cycle.
Because our economic system is broken, many people have no future to look forward to. Just pain and grief. Then beyond this there are other changes like the Internet making porn mainstream and cell phones making it so women can be quick to give up telephone numbers and do escorting, and then just more clubs seeing that it is tough for LE to stop them.
So we have had a cultural change. We are much more like Thailand or the Philippines now, where the sex industry is just flat out accepted.
Now yes, if you think the purpose of our economic system is to forever concentrate more wealth into the hands of those already well off, then I guess you would say that it is not broken. It is working just fine, and any next boom will further this trend.
But I for one do not see this as a desirable state of affairs.
Anyway, to get to your main point, I don't see any reduction in SC "mileage" coming. What I see is a reduction in the layers of plausible deniability, as this "whorification" continues.
Where I am, the number of AMPs where FS is just matter of fact is mind boggling. I see this from Rub Maps. But it fully jives with my own experience with the women in the rooms. In the vast majority of cases they are perfectly happy to give it up. The less often they do this, the more of a treat it is for them when they get to.
Why should American born strippers be any different? Maybe there once was a time when they had an objection to this. Seems like it is no more.
SJG
ELP, 1977, at their peak these guys were grossing more than Led Zeppelin youtube.com
Right now in San Jose there are 57 AMPs where FS is being had. San Jose has only 3 strip clubs.
No let me clarify what this means and how I am interpreting it. It means that at each of these AMPs there is at least one person who submitted a review claiming that FS occurred.
The way I interpret this is that it is almost certainly an undercount. I don't think the girls want these kinds of reviews written, listing their working names. I read the narratives, and I don't see these as being guys that are very close to the girls. I don't think the guys who get along with the girls would write reviews.
My own experience is that it is very rare for an RA to refuse FS is she is being treated nice. About the only exceptions to this I have ever seen have been with virgins.
So why do I mention this? Well there was once a time when Americans would have thought it strange that young women would be giving it up under such circumstances. And so yes, those of us accustomed to AMPs and Asian girls were partaking of something different from our own cultural norms.
What I think has happened is that American girls have changed. An ever increasing number of them now also think it is no big deal to give it up under such conditions, if a guy is basically being nice to them. Then once they've done it once, they will do it easier and easier.
A broken economic system is part of the reason for this change, but it is not all of it.
So I don't go along with this idea of our society benefiting from a coming so called "economic boom". But I also don't see any reason SC mileage would be decreasing.
SJG
SJG: "Now yes, if you think the purpose of our economic system is to forever concentrate more wealth into the hands of those already well off, then I guess you would say that it is not broken"
I don't think this is its purpose at all. Now if we had unbridled capitalism here in the US I agree that would be its purpose. But there is a great deal of socialism in our system that keeps it from getting that bad. Without it I think capitalism would become worse than feudalism in a generation or two tops. Essentially given enough rope to hang itself. That is why real hard-core commies don't like socialism. They think it makes "capitalism" bearable enough that people don't revolt and bring in an ideal communist system.
My own belief is that mixed capitalism and socialism like is the ideal as opposed to an extreme one way or the other. I don't see either side of this tension being too powerful at the moment, and it's a good thing it's there.
On personal level, when I was younger I concerned myself more with what the ideal would be, but now I'm more interested in the way things really are, and how to make some good bucks for myself out of it. A wise trader once told me its best to get the money first then focus on philanthropy and improving the political situation as opposed to the other way around. As I a said above though, I don't see an emergency either way (i.e. too much capitalism or too much socialism).
SJC: "My own experience is that it is very rare for an RA to refuse FS is she is being treated nice"
What's an RA? I'm guessing you don't mean "research assistant".
RA = Relaxation Assistant. It is a euphemism for other labels one might use. Also it is because in some places they regulate massage by requiring licensing, so to avoid this they say it is just relaxation. This means putting hot towels on you.
Of course none of this makes any difference as it still comes down to just time in the room alone with the girl.
See, at an SC they don't have to tell the girls what to do. If you set it up so that guys can spend time alone with them, what needs to happen will, and the girls will get used to it.
I posted before about the Korean girl cutting hair in Sunnyvale, who had not yet signed on to the idea that her job description sometimes included FS. She was even wearing panty hose. We were at an impasse. I never said a single word about sex or sex acts or in any other way treated her like a prostitute. But finally the shoulders dropped, and so we were on and it was the sweetest time ever.
If you build the physical facility, then it happens. Our SC's are not going back.
SJG
its funny how the stevie girl is no where too respond
And I know it won't be popular with either the left or the right, but I think in most western democracies "utilitarian" best describes the aims of the political/economic system. The greatest good for the greatest number. As I say that what I think the aim is, even if it doesn't work that way in practice. And I uncynically think a great number of politicians are consciously trying to the implement that. Now the left will say, no the aim of the system is to concentrate all the power in the hands of just a few. The right will say, no it's to expropriate wealth from hard workers who deserve it to lazy ass bums who just want to collect the dole. Just extreme statements geared to appeal to emotion. The truth is, in my view, is something much more moderate in the middle. But being in the middle is very boring, so the people beating the extreme drums will always get more of the spotlight.
capri: "its funny how the stevie girl is no where too respond"
Doesn't surprise me. I bulldozed right over him for about the hour or so he thought he could tackle things head on. Before he realized his dumb brain would flunk even econ 101 (too many variables changing! can only handle one at a time!)
He'll just hide under rocks now, and peak his head up randomly from time to time to take a potshot here and there. No way he is ever facing things head on again after how badly he was burned last time.
I think just holding onto power is what drives our political and economic system, just trying to keep the peace and prevent revolution and anarchy. There is no more ideology to it than this.
So as so many people are now involved in UHM strip clubs, as there have been so many people involved in AMPs, there is no longer any practical way of stopping it.
SJG
History will be the judge!
I don't think the move in our strip clubs to high, higher, and highest mileage, is just because of economic busts of the last 30 years. In part it is caused because our economic system is broken and so many people now have zero future. Another boom will not change this, it will only worsen it.
But it is also just because attitudes have changed. More and more young women really don't have much aversion to serving in such a capacity. And to me this is just as it has been and continues to be even more so in many third world countries, and especially in Asia.
For people not accustomed to AMPs, and just how matter of fact it all is, this might seem surprising. At the extreme ones, they are doing FS with as many as possible, and so they are really aggressive, and they rake in money. At the more moderate ones it is more of a special request type thing, but this means that the girls are just tickled pink when they get asked to do it.
I posted this, to be expanded upon. These two 26yo hotties from Singapore told me themselves that sometimes guys ask them for P4P FS, and so they go into an unused room and go for it. The reason these girls were here in the US? To staff a RedBook AAMP. What guys wrote about these girls was, "We made out like teenagers, starting as soon as I got in the front door." These girls had been well coached.
But why do I think Karaoke a good way to go? It is just a way of avoiding regulations. It is just a way of letting you fraternize and then pick your girl, and then spend some time alone with her in a room. This is all it takes. Both parties know what is to happen.
Karaoke Girls tuscl.net
History has already shown us. Increasing numbers of people have no employment security, and really nothing to look forward to from their years of toil. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has explained this well. NY Times contributor Paul Krugman shows this over and over. Then there are the Philadelphia Enquirer team, Barnett and Steele, America What Went Wrong, and America Who Stole the Dream.
SJG
I partly agree. In my post that seems to have set so many people off I cited four factors:
Going forward I think 1) will definitely push toward lesser mileage. 2) has already peaked out (in the US) so no push in either direction. 3) is hard to say 4) How long has hip-hop been popular? About ten years now? At some another genre will replace it. But when? Probably the next genre will do less glorifying or pimps and ho's but who knows? Hard to see it being worse, but I guess it's not impossible!
Well, I'm not going to comment on hip hop, other than to say that it is simply music which depicts the ways people actually live. The underground economy is huge, and it is untaxed money.
But I don't think another economic bubble will do anything beneficial for our society. Nor will it do anything to reduce the mileage in SC's, because it will not represent a change in our economic system. It will in fact increase stratification. It will also tend to increase the scale of this economic underground.
SJG
Wealth can solve just about any problem. As society gets more of it, it will solves the ones you talk about too. You can take that one to the bank!
SJG: " But I don't think another economic bubble will do anything beneficial for our society."
That might be true. If it were a bubble. Non-bubble is different.
Yes but these booms do not result in any more wealth creation. Not if by wealth you mean things that people need to live, like food, shelter, clothing, transportation, education, or medical care.
These things are already produced in exactly the quantities needed by those who can afford to pay. For those who cannot pay, too bad.
In the late 80's I saw how investment money went away from semiconductor manufacturing. The money was still there. It is Gilded Age money, money made from the railroads. Investors just got scared over the scale of the new fabrication facilities being built in Asia. So it stopped. When new plants were built in the US, they were in places other than California.
When the money did loosen up for other uses, it was because Gore and Clinton were boosting for the "Information Superhighway". There was no real boom, except in investor confidence. I recognized right away how serious the situation was, because it meant that there were not better things available to invest in.
So those who got in early made zillions, off of the less sophisticate and more gullible people who got in later. Such is how it always goes in Ponzi Schemes.
So yes, there may be a boom of the type which lowers unemployment numbers, and this does help some people to a point. I mean a junk job is better than nothing. But this is not going to deter some young hottie when guys are willing to pay her for sex.
Such a boom does not benefit our society either, not if by that you mean lifting everyone up.
SJG
@SJG “Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has explained this well. NY Times contributor Paul Krugman shows this over and over.”
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
You know this parody of an adult discussion on economics you have been writing has been one big FAIL. Not funny at all.
But citing these two retarded racists who have a combined knowledge of economics something less than my pet rock has was priceless. I mean it was so ludicrous to inject these two dick suckers into even a pretend economic discussion it was way over the top.
Unless...........
No ........no.......you can’t be......OMG you ARE serious. Well that seals it. The long anticipated Zombie Apocalypse is finally here and you are one of the walking brain dead and posting on the internet.
dougie u r so funny!!!!
Cornel West and Michael Moore youtube.com
SJG
Lol!
Lol! How was yesterday's ISM number? I bet it really sucked. Probably way under 50 since the economy must be as bad as stevie-girl says it is.
And how's the US dollar lately? Probably collapsing since we are so fucked. Right? Right?