I mean, you could have your retirement shift towards long-term bonds instead of stocks

With the rise in the Federal Fund rates, that poster would be screwed with bonds too, much worse in fact. Previously issue long term bonds are today worth a fraction of what they were earlier this year.

People won't buy your old bonds (at their lower interest rates) when the US Treasury is issuing new ones right now with much higher yields. You can still hold the bonds to maturity to get all of your money back, but if you need to sell your bonds on the secondary market right now for cash to live on (presumably for those already in retirement) you're going to take a sizable loss.

Gold is significantly down too. 17% decline in value year-to-date.

Residential real estate is down with the increase mortgage rates. Commercial real estate is in the toilet too since COVID really.

The stock market, even with this recent dip, is actually actually outperforming most other traditional investments. The good news for folks with retirement savings who are still working is that no value is actually lost until you sell you investments (stocks/bonds/gold/whatever). If you're still a decade or more away from retirement thats a LONG time for a recover to bring back value from this current downturn.

I don't think a bail out would work (which isn't to say the Trump administration won't try it - you can never confidently predict they won't do something stupid). If they can't work out how to make a profit after $2T of capex, more money on the furnace isn't going to help.

As much as the bank bailouts after 2008 left a bad taste in my mouth, banks are at least self evidently a profitable business that were able to successfully use the bailout to stay afloat.

I could potentially see the AI companies' creditors getting a bailout but most of them seem to be private equity so a bailout would be really unpopular (although see my above comments on not betting against the current US leadership doing something stupid).

On the bright side, there's a real chance we could see Larry Ellison go personally bankrupt. He lives on loans secured against Oracle shares and Oracle is currently indebted up to its eyeballs and borrowing at basically junk rates. If it goes down, those loans get called and he eats shit (to the delight of Sun Microsystems fans everywhere).

What if we sold all the parks and most of the buildings to foreign nations and billionaires and their friends?

Rip :(

I think they hope to keep it going based on vibes and keeping hardware so expensive (for others) that companies don't opt to build their own local rigs to run a model that is probably "good enough" for a lot of tasks.

That didn’t occur to me. Makes sense tho. I sort of was wondering why companies hadn’t figured it out yet. Investment into running on your own hardware needs to be super expensive so they can sell you their AI service.

If microwaves are the analogy for AI then I'm good with it. In my house today I have an oven, a stovetop, a counter top toaster oven/air fryer thingy, and a microwave. Each serves its own purpose but none replaces the other completely.

If in the future AI is a tool that sits and waits it's turn for me to use it for the thing it is best at then I think it will have a place.

If instead it costs a subscription fee, is forced into every other appliance, replaces jobs en mass, and accelerates the downfall of the climate I'm gonna pass.

microwaves are tools, but they are in no way a replacement for the stove.

I think people were making fun of the metaverse pretty much the day of the announcement.

I feel like 15 beans would barely do one meal for one person, not a whole week for two.

To be clear that 3.7% is the 12 months ending in September, not January through October. Inflation is rarely measured YTD, it's usually the trailing 12 months

Meaning the

but it buys approximately 3.7% less than it did in January overall.

part of your comment is inaccurate

Yea in the US, in Romania it's even worse... Our last recorded inflation was 6.5% for september... In May it was 9.7%...

I need to figure out a way to keep my money... Though I at least converted it to Euro. I will probably park it in some sort of short term EU treasuries, tho I've no idea if those are any good... I'll see.

Yeah, probably true. There is a way a responsible admin might try to orchestrate a softer landing. The assholes in this administration are not the least bit responsible.

I'm just remembering two things:

1. The people that could not wait for the dot-com bubble to burst. That was extremely painful in the job market if you were even tangentially related to dot-com.

2. Same thing for people that could not wait for the inflated house prices to drop. Also, extremely painful, for nearly everyone.

If we see that, we need to see gun ownership and armed protests rise.

I could see both. If the AI bubble really pops, used hardware may be available for pennies on the dollar. People and companies may be able to run local models for much less.

But yeah, I could see a lot of us hurting in other ways, even if models get more efficient and more local.

Not if you start shorting now. Trust me, nothing can go wrong with a safe short.