• blady_blah@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    Okay, here’s my conspiracy theory…

    Now let’s say you’re Trump and the supreme Court has said it’s just about impossible to convict somebody of corruption in the US. You see that you’re going to be elected president and your goal is to figure out how to make a crap ton of money off being present. Now you can do the boring old s make dignitaries stay at your hotel thing or have foreign governments. Give Jared kushner a bunch of money… But that’s all pocket change. If you’re president, you can crash the economy. If you know a bunch of Rich Russian oligarchs who can short the market and you can tell them exactly when the market will crash then they can make billions… And you can get your cut too.

    This is why Trump doesn’t really give a shit why the tariffs are in place. That’s why he makes up bullshit answers when asked why the tariffs are implemented. He doesn’t care. … But he really really really wants to yank the market around. First he says tariffs happening, then he says they’re not, then they’re happening again. Every time the market goes up and down he can make a shit ton of money if he can accurately predict when it goes up or down.

    I can’t get this idea out of my head. It makes more sense than anything else I can come up with. There’s so much money to be made if you have the power to yank around the u.s. economy and enough narcissism to not give a shit about the people hurt in the process.

  • skozzii@lemmy.ca
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    5 hours ago

    Damnit, I came here to blame Joe Biden, but it seems like everyone else beat me to it. Oh well, time to go tariff some more countries and then act shocked by the results…

  • ItsTheNorm@lemmy.zip
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    6 hours ago

    How dare Biden tank the economy while trump is president just to make him look bad! Any day now, all these incomprehensible tariff ramblings, threats, and further ostracization of our allies are going to make America so great! /s

    • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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      5 hours ago

      Maybe Trump just didn’t know how to spell and he just meant “Make America grate again” because it certainly does something like that to most people’s nerves at the moment.

  • SeboBear@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 hours ago

    As the fellon in the White House said - „it’s just a small group, boycotting, attacking …“ well I don’t think so „Mr. president“

  • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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    9 hours ago

    I can’t. Is this mental difficulties or that thing journalists do where they have to act like they were literally just born and don’t know anything about the world? I don’t know the dude in OP.

      • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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        6 hours ago

        Honest to god, I really just missed it. Reading it now it’s so blatantly sarcasm, I’m going to just have to blame it on a combination of lack of sleep and my being a dumbass.

  • JiveTurkey@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Tbh Wall Street can fuckin off. They helped create this mess. If this ship is going down, let’s make sure none of the assholes find a seat on a life boat.

    • jaybone@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      All of everyone’s retirement accounts are invested in the market. So it’s not just those assholes who get fucked by this.

      • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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        7 hours ago

        Maybe it will force Americans to do something against that? If no one has any retirement, there’s bound to be a lot of public outcry. There’s nothing to lose if you have nothing.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        All of everyone’s retirement accounts are invested in the market.

        Americans not willing to recognize that Social Security exists is such a fucking capitalist vibe

        • WraithGear@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          Social security is not enough to live off of. Is projected to be unobtainable for future generations who are paying into it, and is currently on the chopping block

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            7 hours ago

            Social security is not enough to live off of.

            Nevertheless, it is 40% of retirement income. And none of it comes from the stock market.

            projected to be unobtainable for future generations

            Projected by advocacy groups trying to abolish social security.

            • WraithGear@lemmy.world
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              7 hours ago

              You are being untruthful and dismissive: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2024/tr2024.pdf Page 9 is the jist.

              They are going to have to change something either raise the retirement age or lower the payments both which make it more unobtainable then it already is. And that 40% is based what people make… in a time of rising inflation and stagnant wages…

              The fact that social security is not tied to the market is super irrelevant, when the argument was that the 401k is in danger, when social security already is not enough to live on. so it’s important that people have a successful 401k to supplement it.

              • Bronzebeard@lemm.ee
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                6 hours ago

                The real solution is making the average wage go up. Significantly. Which puts more money into the program overall.

                With so much money having been shifted away from the average worker and Into the pockets of people who hit the FICA cap in their first paycheck of the year, over the last few decades, it was bound to have issues.

              • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                7 hours ago

                They are going to have to change something either raise the retirement age or lower the payments

                Or just pay directly out of the general fund, which they can do with a simple vote in Congress and which they already do for Medicare/caid.

                The fact that social security is not tied to the market is super irrelevant

                It is the primary argument both for and against the program. Investors kick and scream about the benefits of compound interest, right up until a big market nosedive and bankruptcy spree. Meanwhile, it’s the benchmark for guaranteed basic income that progressives love to reference.

                Decoupling income from economic growth isn’t irrelevant. It’s the program’s entire raison d’etre.

                • WraithGear@lemmy.world
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                  6 hours ago

                  You would have the tax payers pay even more of the burden now, with out the benefit of even having it contribute to their social security… to pay the gap in social security, damning the tax payers twice. That’s not a permanent solution on top of that! I’m not saying social security should be attached to the market. I mean we are talking about the market fall after all! I am saying that being flippant that everyone Just needs to remember they have social security is dismissive and not relevant.

    • takeda@lemm.ee
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      16 hours ago

      Oh you can be sure Congress will be working overtime to pass a bill with relief to those big businesses that cannot fail.

      • joenforcer@midwest.social
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        15 hours ago

        Side note, why do people seem to struggle so much with the spelling of the word “tariff”? We’ve seen it so many times yet so many people get it wrong.

        • III@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          Not really a side note, this is just the tip of the “American stupidity and overconfidence that got us here” iceberg.

  • protist@mander.xyz
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    17 hours ago

    Here in the US, I transfered most of my 403(b) investments into European, Asian, and “emerging market” funds, so I’m happy to be doing my part.

    • sloppychops@lemmy.ca
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      32 minutes ago

      Same, babe. Sold all my iShares and Vanguard ETFs and moved into BMO emerging markets, Euro, and Canadian funds.

      I still need to look into my employer group pension account. I don’t know how much control I actually have over that.

    • SupahRevs@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      I did the same with my IRA. I was in VOO but moved to VGK and some short term bonds. So far I’ve saved myself a good amount of money.

      • protist@mander.xyz
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        16 hours ago

        If you have a 401(k) or 403(b) through your employer, your employer should be partnered with an investment firm to manage it (e.g. T Rowe Price, Prudential, or Transamerica). You need to figure out which company you’ve got and log in to your account. Ask your HR dept if you can’t figure it out.

        That firm will automatically choose where to invest your money unless you log in to your account on their website and tell them where you want it invested.

        Most investment firms will offer a limited selection of mutual funds with a variety of objectives. They usually link to each prospectus right there on the site, and the prospectus often has a pie chart telling you where a fund’s investments are located (US, Europe, Asia, etc). It will also list their performance over time, expense ratios, and other useful info, like whether they invest in large vs small cap businesses and their largest individual holdings.

        You want to change both where your current investments are allocated and where your future contributions will be allocated.

        You also want to try to find funds with low expense ratios (I try to stay below 0.10% unless it’s a fund I really like and am willing to make an exception for). Anything titled “index fund” is likely to be low. Your money is almost guaranteed to be automatically invested in funds with high expense ratios, cutting into your long-term growth, because the investment firm makes big bucks giving your money to people who aren’t wise with it.

        If you want to get serious, you can even set up a personal choice account where you can totally independently decide where to invest your money, even in individual stocks. This comes with significant risk and is not a great idea for laypeople like you or I.

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
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    18 hours ago

    What’s interesting to me is that the “shape” of the line still matches the global line pretty well so there are some “fundamental” aspects that still affect markets, but overall we’re in a nosedive for “some reason.”