That's a good point; these robots will not be born all of a sudden writing shakespeare or thinking deeply abstract thoughts - not at first, at least. That will probably take a while longer to perfect. And <i>someone</i> will be needed to program and perfect the designs of these robots (until they start doing that job themselves too, but again, probably later) And, they'll probably be expensive at first; a roomful of mexicans might be more cost-effective for some jobs. So they won't replace all workers all at once. First will be selected manual laborers, but even that might be a slow process. <b>But there are scarier prospects to AI, aside from loss of jobs</b>. An AI can eventually be smarter (in some ways at least) than any human. Imagine, for example, a time when even the BEST human trader would get shredded in the markets, and all trading is done by intelligent programs. The money goes not to the best trader, but to the trader with the most advanced AI. <i>That</i>, I think is scary; but I'm sure there are even scarier ramifications that you can think of in 5 minutes.
Yup, pretty much the bullseye of the problem right there. We ain't going anywhere till a good chunk of debt gets repaid. Need to suck up a lot of excess housing inventory as well. Builders produced for a market that included speculators buying a half dozen homes at a clip. Price is not the only problem. Too damn many houses out there. Maybe we should just torch the excess? Constructive destruction!
Yes. I used the analogy of a rubber band while explaining my views to my wife. For decades, consumer spending has expanded as we've gone through a years of economic expansion in this country. The past several years, the rubber band kept expanding due to credit cards and borrowing on home values. That credit is now much tighter and the rubber band is stretched as far as it can. Now the only thing left is for a snapback (reduced consumer spending). This will put a drag on our economy which 70% consumer spending. I totally agree. We aren't even close to the end of this. We're probably facing 2+ years of recession, IMO.
That is a fact. 80% of Americans are broke. Negative equity. That's what happens when you put nothing down and ride a house into lower values, it eats up the value of anything else you own outright.
An Indian reservation in my area decided to stop renewing leases for land where thousands of non-Indian people had new homes built. The value of those homes took a 50% hit overnight. Some owners were so pissed that they torched their own homes when their lease ran out. Other owners physically moved their houses onto non-Indian land.
You've obviously never been through a consumer lead recession. My parents haven't either because they were only toddlers at the time. My grandparents went through one, though.
Betting against 30-year bonds was the best trade I could come up with, too, to hedge against the inflation I think is coming. Exactly how do you place the trade like he's talking about?
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/curve-steepener-trade.asp http://www.efinancialnews.com/investmentbanking/index/content/2451059192 They are likely using big time leverage to pull this off.