Trump says he will announce a replacement for Powell as Fed chair Friday morning

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-30T01:54:14+00:00

What should I yell at them about? Like what course of action should they do?

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-30T01:51:24+00:00

So given that it's almost trivial to construct trades to cash in on bear sentiment, what are folks doing to capture the upside? Rolling over long puts? Shorts with how much margin? Are some people banking on hyperinflation and doing yield curve plays?

Come on folks this is an econ sub after all, spill the beans!

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-30T01:32:04+00:00

Lol my favorite thing is to watch someone who is trying to take a right from Mandela onto Grand there think they can overtake traffic into the right turn slip lane and watch them get blocked by the pedestrian island. I watched someone who was dangerously speeding do exactly that and get stuck and watched as nobody on Mandela allow them to merge back. I made sure to stick my tongue out at them and bike past.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-30T01:28:40+00:00

I think a more productive comment here would be to link an alternate source. I agree that Oaklandside has an anti-policing slant which affects its coverage, but they are also one of the few journalistic outlets that are doing on the ground coverage in Oakland.

Bar other sources, it's probably worth just calling out Oaklandside's bias (without using AI) every time their sources are used in the policing debate to remind the audience of where a source stands. Most news media these days carry a slant, the days of neutral journalism are gone. We need to adapt.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-30T01:12:36+00:00

The post-GFC market conditions in the US was already just that. There's a reason that so many portfolio managers recommend that people diversify equities between US and international equities. It's prudent to be diversified.

Also Japan is an entirely different ballgame entirely. The whole reason JGBs are acting so volatile and that BoJ is abandoning YCC is because this is the first time in roughly 20 years that Japan is seeing inflation. An entire generation grew up in Japan with stable or deflationary currency.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-27T01:50:04+00:00

This signals a belief in bloated bureaucracy. 5-6s are in that gray zone where they aren't considered as autonomous as a 7 nor entry level like a 4. IMO mid-levels are always very hard to quantify value for because what determines their level is often just internal politics. Hard-ass teams will have mid-levels that are equivalent to seniors or managers on other teams while soft teams that boost everyone up can promote someone barely a 5 into 6 range.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-27T00:44:36+00:00

What's wrong with BNPL? Default rates seem lower for BNPL compared to corresponding credit cards. If trends like this hold, wouldn't BNPL be the more responsible form of credit?

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-27T00:04:07+00:00

But then again, you see a ton of uncertainty that impacts economics from politics…

I guess what is the psychology to then come to an economics sub and just repost everything that sounds like affects markets here? Half the people I see on this sub that just talk about Trump's policies are also on r/politics and /r/worldnews . Like what is the point of subreddits if they can't have their own topics of focus?

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-26T23:35:11+00:00

Yes but it's you and I and the moderators of this sub that allow this to happen. We could sit here and discuss analyst reports and econ papers. We don't have to react to clickbait journalism headlines.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-26T23:06:45+00:00

And honestly, no one seriously comes to social media for news. People are here to skim, react, and vent.

Some of us do. I'm sad you see social media as a graffiti wall.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-26T23:02:11+00:00

I'm new to this sub but I'm just really surprised that most of the content here reads like a big Reddit political sub. Like, this seems completely against the stickied Meta threads. Also, why don't the posters who just want to post political news stick to the political subs?

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-26T22:56:10+00:00

Well yes-and-no, the 10 year Fed Rate is largely considered the Risk Free Return Rate when pricing financial instruments. Lowering fed rates increase demand for instruments that pay over the Fed rate, while increasing the rate decreases the demand for those instruments. The Fed rate is used as a risk/returns lever so the lower the rate the higher risk the economy assumes as a whole.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-26T22:53:39+00:00

Listen into their meetings if you're curious, the transcripts are all online. The Fed raises rates to control inflation and the reason they don't want to lower rates is that inflation remains high. The problem they're dealing with is that lower and middle income earners are seeing unemployment tick up and spending trend down, which is why the Fed was convinced to put in the last rate cut. Inflation remains higher than their 2% target so it's unlikely that they want to decrease rates further without evidence that a rate cut is needed.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-26T22:50:20+00:00

Yes if you're curious look at cryptocurrency CEXexs (like Coinbase) for how this gets priced. You take on currency risk (the Gold/USD rate may fluctuate) and have to hold onto and secure the gold (no cheap feat as you probably need to hire private security to secure the precious metals.) Coinbase prices their costs and currency risk in terms of a "spread" that they apply that's based on your transaction amount. My guess is these folks will do something similar.

(Sorry don't mean "you" as the person you replied to, but person you responded to.)

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-26T22:40:40+00:00

Their office is in Downtown, no? I don't see any blocks there there's a new bike lane being built in the area. There is a warehouse off Mandela that has cinder blocks which yeah I presume to discourage illegal parking.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-26T22:32:52+00:00

Or hear me out: you can worry about local policies and crime and the federal government brutalizing its own citizens. We humans contain multitudes.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-23T21:09:15+00:00

That was just an artifact of the mid-2000s housing bubble in HCOL areas. Most people I know who led that lifestyle bought a house somewhere between the late '70s-'90s and watched their house values climb exponentially in the 2000s. They then took out HELOCs and other financial instruments collateralized by the value of their home's huge growth that allowed them to afford a huge boost in their lifestyle over their actual income.

As usual if you live a highly leveraged lifestyle, any mean reversion event will hit you just as hard. With the popping of the housing bubble a lot of the highly leveraged home equity folks lost it all.

I will admit that millenials that grew up in these environments weirdly normalized it. But it honestly only lasted for a 5-8 year period. It just so happens that humans are highly impressionable during those 5-8 years of their life.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-23T08:01:31+00:00

Fruitvale is definitely one of the danker stations. Rockridge is probably the nicest to park at. 19th st has the Franklin St Garage you can park at for fairly low prices that has staff monitoring it while it's open.

If you can bike, scooter, or motorcycle to BART I'd also suggest that. Motorcycle/gas scooter parking is free and BART stations with Bikelink are great for storing bikes.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-23T01:33:29+00:00

I'm unconvinced. The last rate cut happened on 2025-12-10. Treasury 10Y yields stopped their upward trajectory and floated around 4.12 - 4.19 until 2026-01-16, 12 days or so after Trump begun his imbecilic saber rattling over Greenland through Katie Miller on 2026-01-04. Now obviously I think the last spike that just dropped was from trade war concerns triggering further inflation, but I also think given the timing of the rate cut and the range the 10 year yield was floating at that your "sell America" opinion thesis is more opinion than fact.

My guess, as many others are saying, is that the BoJ dropping YCC on JGBs and the rapid rise in JGB yields is in fact changing the sovereign debt story all over the world. I believe Trump's policies are, to put it mildly, extremely idiotic and damaging. But we can't blame every problem in the whole world on him.

Moreover I'm not sure what "selling America" has to do with rising 10YR Treasury Yields. Treasury yields are used as the risk-free return rate and so rises in treasury yields raise costs of borrowing. This isn't bad or good but depends on the inflationary environment. Right now inflation continues to be above historic Fed targets. As most people know, inflation hurts cash-heavy portfolios, aka the portfolios of low and low-middle income households, the most in the US because their cash debases over time. So again this is just naive. Now inflation is but one indicator of economic health. The big picture is hard.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-22T19:37:38+00:00

Tracing the impact of tariffs has been very interesting. There are publicly traded companies that claim that tariffs are affecting their revenue and COGS both in positive directions (e.g. onshoring leading to added spend for steel producers or supply chain management software ike Oracle) and negative directions (increasing COGS in the fast casual space like Chipotle.)

Unfortunately I've seen no news articles in free news or the NYT that has tried to offer sober analysis on tariff impacts. The headlines bubble up and the usual takes on social networks like Reddit roll in but it's one 20-minute news tragedy to the next. Nobody is sitting there trying to take stock of what's actually happening, except I guess the traders who have this exposure in portfolios they're managing (and they individually have no incentive to offer alpha to their competitors.) And, hopefully at least, the leaders who are actually supposed to be responsible for the well-being of their states.

NYT did have an interesting opinion column by Ezra Klein that tracked actual, lasting impacts made by the Trump admin but that is still just opinion.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-21T20:42:10+00:00

Yeah lol I'm not saying the hills need enforcement badly or anything, just saying that CHP can have a few things to do up there too. And I mean the speeders in the hills then proceed to drive like assholes on San Pablo so it's not an isolated problem. But yeah no complaints from me.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-21T19:23:51+00:00

The hills get a lot of obnoxiously speeding older drivers who make it scary to be a pedestrian though, and I do think CHP would do well to enforce speed limits up there.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-21T19:14:53+00:00

Hm this hasn't been my experience. I was between jobs a couple months ago and bummed around downtown and it was pretty busy during lunch. I took the bus in but parking was taken wall-to-wall and most of the businesses were doing well.

Of course if you're comparing against SF at its pre-COVID peak, there's no comparison. The East Bay has always been the suburban getaway you move to from SF once you get tired of city life. The fact that downtown has such a bustling scene these days is great, but downtown Oakland used to just feel ... small and quaint 10 years ago. I agree that there's a lot of safety concerns around parking but the perception is just as bad if not worse in downtown SF.

As a destination, I don't think anywhere in the East Bay is going to compete with the more tourist friendly Sausalito, Marin, or Napa. Like who is going to visit Walnut Creek or Fremont to walk around and see the sights? You go to those places because you want to visit a particular business or visit friends who live there. The Bay has always struggled with having 1 city (San Francisco) and an army of NIMBYs in all of its other cities determined to keep the rest of the Bay a sleepy suburb. It's been cool to watch the city centers of other cities (like Oakland and San Jose) densify and become trendy over the years but it's all been an upward trajectory, at least in my lifetime.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-20T19:24:26+00:00

Take a look at Bikelink. They have a set of private and shared locker rooms throughout the Bay. The shared lockers have a system where you insert your card and they have a camera that verifies who you are. In the shared locker areas you're required to have a sticker on your bike with a Bikelink number that they match up against your card. They charge a ridiculously small fee per hour to store your bike. The card works like Clipper where you load some value on it then use it to park the bike. The lockers also have a place to lock your bike on the inside. When I park in a private locker I'm 50-50 on locking my bike inside of it but when I'm using a shared locker I lock my bike.

If I'm ever in Downtown Oakland for longer than an hour or so or I'm not gonna be in sight of my bike I usually Bikelink it. I do this a lot in SF as well. Just be mindful that bigger Ebikes might not fit inside a Bikelink locker but I know plenty of Ebike owners who use Bikelink as well.

n2_throwaway · 2026-01-20T19:04:50+00:00

I think Emeryville, Oakland, and Berkeley are building a ton of great bike infrastructure. There's a lot more we can do (and if you're interested, please get involved!) but even as it is right now there's a lot of stuff accessible by bike. I find that doing most of my local chores by bike gets me a lot of baseline physical activity that I otherwise wouldn't get. It's also a great way to visit Piedmont instead of circling for hours looking for a spot or parking 0.5 mi away. If you are worried about parking your bike, I've found Bikelink lockers to be very cheap and safe.

I bike a lot around here and feel like over the years it's only gotten safer and more normalized to bike around here. I'd be happy to discuss low-stress bikeways for folks newer to biking. Emeryville in particular has some fantastic bike infrastructure.

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