[RealJustme]

No matter which one Trump runs against, Trump is the young'un in the race.

[johnforbes]

The fresh new face for the Democrats is that paragon of youth -- Joe Biden.

For 4 decades, Biden represented one of the worst business models in the country, the credit card industry.

[elklindo69]

Dayumn Johnnie...You truly are stunningly ignorant.

Visa and Mastercard have the best business models out there. Visa has an ROIC of some 25% and Mastercard is around 50%. That's astonishing...they are printing money.

But I'm not surprised since you think that stock splits increase shareholder wealth.

[johnforbes]

Oh come on Elkin.

Every day on this fine forum, I spot you 50 IQ points and still have a pronounced advantage.

I was analyzed the credit card company business model the same way Liz Warren would -- by to what extent it exploits and victimizes dumb and poor people.

I prefer to own better stocks.

[elklindo69]

Okey Dokie Johnnie........If you know anything better than V or MA please let me know.

V-MA vs S&P500.JPG (91.94 KiB) Viewed 4173 times

[johnforbes]

Elkin, go back and read my earlier post.

As a leftist, surely not everything you do is for the performance of a stock?

Surely you, like me, ask what the business is you are investing in.

Unless it is not volitional, as in a fund, I don't invest in any tobacco company or credit card company or liquor seller, etc.

[elklindo69]

Or oil companies which contribute to billions of tons of CO2 being dumped into the atmosphere every year which are directly responsible for global warming?

[Clownkicker]

johnforbes is an enthusiastic investor in oil companies.

Given his constant blathering, gasbag forbes clearly doesn't have a problem with releasing copious quantities of unwanted CO2 into the atmosphere.

[johnforbes]

I have a friend who is an artist, and she is from one of the known oil family operations, but I consider myself not equipped to assess various oil/gas outfits.

For those reasons, I don't own individual oil stocks, although of course I own them in the context of funds, etc.

[Clownkicker]

"As a leftist, surely not everything you do is for the performance of a stock?
Surely you, like me, ask what the business is you are investing in."-johnflubs

I think johnforbes just called himself "a leftist".

But as we all know, johnforbes has no scruples, so he's 'just kidding' again.

[johnforbes]

It is utterly simplistic -- not to mention wrong -- to assume that only leftist nuts like Clown care about issues such as widespread smoking.

Or giving high interest credit cards to people with no clue how to handle money.

[Clownkicker]

Heck, I was kidding, johnny.

It's that legendary conservative lack of a sense of humor, I guess.

[johnforbes]

Fair enough, but like most people I tended more toward the Left when young.

And, when I realized that money did not grow on trees, and that every new federal law was not an improvement, I became more conservative and thought about whether a change might just be a change versus an improvement.

[Clownkicker]

Apparently johnforbes needs to learn what "money" is in our economic system.

It's true, money doesn't grow on tress. And since we are no longer on the gold standard, it also isn't dug out of the ground.
It is created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve in computers. It is created in the form of debt.

And we can have as much of it as we wish, literally.
The only question is "How much will that money be worth?" (i.e., how much in goods and services will it buy?)

A trillion dollars was created by the Federal Reserve out of thin air in the years after the 2008 economic collapse. Those computer 1s and 0s (newly created money) were then transferred into other computers in what was labeled "quantitative easing" and surprisingly there was no significant increase in the rate of inflation to reduce the buying power of the dollar below what it would have been without the new money being dumped into the economy.

The part of the national debt 'owed' to the Federal Reserve could simply be erased tomorrow and no one besides the Federal Reserve Banks would notice. They created it out of thin air and it could just as easily return to thin air. Think of the gigantic fiscal burden that would lift from the backs of American taxpayers if we didn't have to pay the interest on the money WE allowed the Federal Reserve to create in the first place.

[RealJustme]

Got gold?

[Clownkicker]

Just so RealTool reads this, I'll post it here.

Gold started this year at $1530. It is now at $1579.

That's now a gain of just 3% this year, down from the 10% gain of two days ago.


As always, RealTool is the perfect negative indicator.

Got gold?

[Clownkicker]

Now gold is at $1568.

That's less than a 2.5% gain this year-------and still dropping.

Got gold?