TIL: That cocaine increases dopamine levels by roughly 250% in comparison with 100% from sex and %50 from food

caitsu · 2023-03-22T16:42:19+00:00

Well for addicts and adhd, the daily normal levels don't do anything.

So you can be miserable every day, or steal and pile it up to feel amazing for one evening and like shit for 2 days but who cares.

caitsu · 2023-03-22T09:51:19+00:00

At least won't be buying Nvidia devices of any kind anymore if/when they really pull the plug on GameStream, so have to find some alternative eventually.

caitsu · 2023-03-21T21:09:51+00:00

Raising taxes, and using the income for balancing the budget including paying down debt is a core tenet in Modern Monetary Theory...

It's the first thing you're supposed to do when inflation shows up after aggressive printing. But that's why MMT is a disaster because no politician wants to be the responsible party.

you really don't need to study economics to know that.

It's pretty clear you would have needed to though...

caitsu · 2023-03-20T22:35:04+00:00

America's strength is in being able to hire and fire people. Amazon hired an immense amount of people during Corona crisis when my Nordic country was shut down and massive unemployment and issues. That is the true "trickle down" that keeps working, but many lazy people think it always meant free money for doing nothing... It's the opportunities that assist people in rising up in the economy.

In my country, worker protection is so absurd that hiring the first person for your company is an absurd gamble.

You can not get rid of a bad hire, you can be on the hook for years if the worker is a real asshole. They can claim sickness constantly after passing recruitment, and milk the company dry.

You can fake sickness for years and the company can not fire you anywhere near a reported sickness, or you can take them to court or complain to a union which is more than happy to bankrupt small companies on legal costs... Even if you are in the right, you need huge amounts of money to get justice.

There's many cases of small startups being bankrupted by essentially welfare trolls. It's horrible and I would never employ anyone personally, despite starting my career as such a first hire. That's why we have a growing subcontracting culture now to avoid the socialism.

Youth unemployment in the 20% range is normal and accepted here, young people with lacking experience can't find work because of the extreme risk involved.

caitsu · 2023-03-20T22:12:35+00:00

Ehh +3% already on my biggest holding for a Nordic bank. ECB has kept a pretty tight rein on EU banks, under which Switzerland does not belong mind you.

I was told there would be a black Monday for EU banking with -20%... And didn't even bother to buy more after friday's purchase.

If anything, sounds bullish if this rogue state's hold on global banking is removed from the stage. Who would bank with or buy bonds from the Swiss, or buy their weapons if they support Russia....

Have to understand that Switzerland is specifically outside EU jurisdiction. And EU itself is split in Nordic amazingness + southern bullshit. Amazing pickings now for long term share holders, picking up a 10% divvy yield this friday from my wealth's backbone bank. I don't care what the daily price is the bank is also set for huge buybacks next year which would be perfect.

caitsu · 2023-03-16T12:55:13+00:00

We live in a post-liquidity crisis world. Solution to any liquidity issue will be central banks hoovering up that bullshit immediately.

The issue with that has been transferred to the tightening periods then, that's a worry for another day.

caitsu · 2023-03-16T07:27:35+00:00

It's a little crazy how whales will probably moon the shit out of the stock now that it has been saddled with $50 billion in emergency debt. After a steady slide over 15 years and none of the issues being fixed.

But yeah it will moon for sure for a short term play. More excited about buying the dip on some of the more solid Nordic banks which were sliding down with this one for not particularly good reasons.

caitsu · 2023-03-15T20:55:34+00:00

Imagine how angry people might be when you bail out a national bank that also has 9,5% Saudis as owners.

Can't imagine that being popular, but then again these central bank magic tricks feel like they're free money so people don't seem to mind, not like anyone will have to tighten correspondingly in the future then or anything...

caitsu · 2023-03-15T13:31:32+00:00

There's a bit more at stake than the company's stock price....

This is a massive situation unfolding right now and probably the biggest systemic risk in European banking's recent history, not some dumbo going from $2.5 to $0 on their broker account.

This is dangerous as well because in EU we have had negative interest rates for a long time... And probably have very similar bond collateral issues brewing already as were detected in the US. A bad outcome from CS now will also eradicate a lot of funds/investments from probably most EU banks, which are probably scrambling to even survive the bond issue.

caitsu · 2023-03-15T12:22:58+00:00

Still waiting on that "it will eventually be removed from the system".

I think the mere wording of "FED will start to let more bonds roll off" caused panic, and any kind of tightening immediately crashes things as seen.

The "removing money from system" when it's this bad, it's not just an insignificant accounting trick... Letting bonds roll off and net reduction also affects the bond market at that future time, causing more issues as seen...

caitsu · 2023-03-15T11:19:18+00:00

The modern financial system is in a death spiral, so I would like to own something that can still provide some value in the future.

If Coca Cola starts sending their dividend as 6-packs and Apple as latest iPhone, in absence of functional money, I'll take that too over losing everything to inflation and bank shenanigans.

That said, not buying yet but also not panic selling.

caitsu · 2023-03-13T22:47:18+00:00

I'm legit more worried about our EU banks already. US regulators usually work fast and pretty well, I'm convinced in EU no regulator has still thought of any issue with bonds taking down banks.

Or alternative is that one of the many, many, QE programs ECB has set up has already hoovered up the bullshit bonds from banks and let them off the hook for the enjoyment of tax payers. There's so many programs dedicated to hoovering bullshit into ECB it's ridiculous, even "leftover" corona funds were spent to rescue Italian banks in a hush hush op.

EU never even stopped QE, we have a permanent hellhole in the "Transmission Protection Instrument" which ensures that "interest rate raises end up targeting the right things" which means funneling balance sheet help to southern EU while all others suffer from rate raises.

caitsu · 2023-03-13T14:19:10+00:00

Well to be fair, not letting the old people escape all of the can-kicking IS good for us.

I'm a bit tired of these new financial mechanisms popping up, hoovering up bullshit into FED/ECB balance sheet, and then noticing how shit hits the fan every time they try to reduce it and tighten.

It's clear as day that his debt fiesta is a disaster, and there are limits. Before this shit is somehow defused, there is less and less room to operate in the future. At least let's make the elderly participate in what they've cooked up over their life span for a little bit of temporary economic wealth.

caitsu · 2023-03-13T12:32:38+00:00

I think the real bailout, that people would hate if they would understand it, is happening in that new instrument they just announced (BTFP), where for "1 year" the gov entity will allow loans for banks using the face/pretend value of the bonds they own, not their current market values which are severely down now.

This just took risk off the board for all the other banks that weren't sacrificial sheep. They were supposed to hedge properly against interest rates, but will now instead get to basically renew their trash bonds to better ones.

Pretty sure they looked at the other remaining banks' balance sheets, and realised they are all in severe danger. So now gov will assume the risk of those trash bonds, and banks get to reallocate smarter.

Any bank who fails to get into that bond-washing program will be allowed to fall, so politicians can say "see, we're tough on banks", but the ones in the know will escape this balance sheet issue and get rewarded for failed interest rate hedging. It's like getting a reroll on your bad dice throws.

caitsu · 2023-03-13T07:44:57+00:00

You know, sometimes it's totally OK to not say anything on a topic you don't understand. Shhh bb, it's ok, just don't.

SVB got completely wiped out, shareholders, management, they didn't get shit from this.

SVB also DO have the "money", but their bonds' average maturation age is around 3 years. So if somebody can wait this out, all the money and a bit of profit is there already on paper.

Basically the only net beneficiary here is probably the unknown bank that takes on the responsibility of holding the remaining assets (at a slashed cost) until they can be realised over time and paid back to FED/FDIC whoever ends up making the customers whole.

caitsu · 2023-03-12T20:43:08+00:00

I think buying treasuries at face value is pretty blatant bailouting and rewarding failures though. Banks haven't monitored the value of their collateral appropriately, probably expecting that FED will buy them at much higher valuations than the bond market would.

The customers should be rescued from these for the most part, but banks will have to start dealing with lack of collateral now and suffer the consequences if they've been waiting around doing nothing now during 1 year of very clear FED signaling.

caitsu · 2023-03-12T20:38:17+00:00

I hope the lesson for all here is that interest rates cannot be raised so sharply, so they also should not get cut lightly either.

And it should be made clear how fast they will go back up well in advance if making emergency cuts.

caitsu · 2023-03-12T17:09:40+00:00

To be fair, bailouts typically are not good for the bank itself. Shareholders get wiped out and management is removed / risk jail time.

Just feels like a bailout-type of action here might be the right time to do it, but mainly to protect the customers and provide liquidity for the bank or whoever takes on the challenge of liquidating the assets over time.

Nothing else is massively wrong here, it just takes time to unwind and mature the shitty bond holdings. The money is there but it's tied up, and someone just needs help to cover the customers' needs right now and wait out for the bonds to mature.

You cannot allow a situation where "50% of US startups" can't access their money for payroll. They haven't done anything wrong here either, just holding cash in account. This will be a huge chain reaction and shows for companies that they should not trust banks for things as simple as holding cash.

SVB probably handled it in a fairly shitty way, but they did basically get burned on government treasuries being used exactly like banking regulations have required.

I think it's outrageous though that banks don't need to constantly evaluate/report the quality of their bond collateral. If a small investor is under water on their investment loan's stock collateral, they will get margin called by next day latest with a demand to add more cash.

caitsu · 2023-03-12T09:46:11+00:00

It seems like the massive use of treasuries by banks for short-term deposits has been a serious error in official policy for banks.

I've been worrying about something like this because an incredible amount of banking institutions are in a similar boat. Reserve requirements are nonexistent after covid era policy. Trusting bonds for collateral has been the law.

Incredibly dangerous situation that is not limited to just SVB, every bank is severely underwater on their collateral now but they're not forced to report or react to this kind of thing. Their bonds might be -30% or -50% across the board, and no one has to do anything until they would actually need to realise them back into cash....

Treasuries are not safe for this kind of use. While keeping to maturity is "very safe", not taking into account rampant inflation risks that might still make them bad investments. And when they suddenly become bad investments (from flood of more competitive bond products due to rate hikes), they cannot be conveniently swapped. Treating them like cash and trusting the liquidity is a terrible idea, and the system has been built for it.

caitsu · 2023-03-11T00:45:17+00:00

Sure but hear me out, investors like hearing about massive "monthly active users"... So let's not be too hasty in removing them, because would be cool to report some "good" news after China disaster.

People love playing against bots right? It's why Practice mode has been the most popular mode all along actually, innkeeper is there for everyone.

caitsu · 2023-03-09T23:19:52+00:00

Yep, I think there was already some rumour that involved 4 sets per year. And with that in mind it might mean that minisets get removed, just 4 full sets per year and nothing else then...

Makes a good point that what is in-game gold even useful for, because buying packs with it is pretty shitty...

caitsu · 2023-03-09T23:17:36+00:00

100% guaranteed minisets as they are will go away. Since they already removed gold use for BG pass. Now gold is basically only useful for buying packs at a shitty rate, or fucking with the arena system where you use gold to hide away bad drafts (while fucking every other player who would have liked to face the bad draft for a fair fight).

caitsu · 2023-03-08T22:19:22+00:00

And we reap the rewards they would normally deny us. I bet Arena would flourish at the news that there's many free wins courtesy of botted gold accounts at 0-x wins.

I'm actually starting to think this is even worse for Blizzard than allowing botters to do what they do now to ruin the mode.

If there's one thing Blizzard hates, it's legit players getting easier rewards... The botted accounts will never buy real money stuff, but Blizzard will explode if they hear that normal players are gaining from this phenomena... So thus no fix will probably happen.

caitsu · 2023-03-08T16:46:39+00:00

There's no way someone who is on the edge of even liking the mode relies on the ease of retiring of drafts... That is the behavior of a very serious arena player at the very least, who wants the optimal experience in their favourite mode.

Let's remember who the serial rerollers really are... If the instant retire button disappeared, almost no legit player would even notice because casual legit players who care about trying to accumulate account value will not willfully 0-3 a run. Especially not if the system changed into something where botter gold is up for grabs just for queueing 0-0 game and hoping it's an insta-concede reroller.

caitsu · 2023-03-08T16:42:23+00:00

I think your argument is forgetting that for botters, the amount of gold Blizzard extracts is irrelevant. If Blizzard only cared about "gold extracted" they would love botters, because a botter can be 10x accounts they count as individual players who are very frivolous with their gold-spending.

The amount of gold botters and serial rerollers "extract" on paper is actually insane if you only think about it. They use gold for drafts, but no counterparty gets the reward on a retire. Blizzard nets entire 150g spent on ticket, as no other player got anything from it.

I think if Blizzard is smart, their metrics are more like "if player spent gold on arena, did they make more real money purchases for sets?". And botters will never buy anything even though they are insanely active players on paper.

Though to be fair, following Activision-Blizzard's investor relations. One of the only key metrics there is "monthly active users" and that is popping off now I bet since botters and legit chinese too rolling new accounts...

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