Cape May Dave - proud vermin
LightNews LightNews
banner
capemaydave.bsky.social
Cape May Dave - proud vermin
@capemaydave.bsky.social
1.9K followers 1.2K following 6.9K posts
Born in the 60s. Cornell. Physics/Philosophy major. retired Wall St. derivatives trader. A guy who believes the US experiment in self-government is a less than 50/50 proposition going forward, but will die on that hill. #231273
Posts Replies Media Videos
capemaydave.bsky.social
@pkrugman.bsky.social and @gelliottmorris.com had an illuminating discussion about Tuesday's election.

This is one of many useful nuggets.

paulkrugman.substack.com/p/after-the-...
Let me unpack. So today, polls have a response rate less than 1 percentage point, in some cases less than 1/10th of a percentage point. So the people you get are really weird, it’s terrible. The people you get to answering surveys are really, really weird. The way you account for that is to increase the weight on respondents who you think are underrepresented. Based on some benchmarks, we get really good demographic benchmarks from the census. That’s pretty easy. That problem has been solved for the better half of a century at this point, but we don’t have good benchmarks for the partisan composition of the electorate. We don’t really know how many Republicans or Democrats should be showing up in an off year election until the election happens, so pollsters have to make guesses about this. Some pollsters have said that their polls should be representative of the Kamala Harris and Donald Trump distribution of voters in the off-year election. Those people underestimated Democrats because, of course, the electorate was much friendlier to Democrats. You had a lot of Republicans not show up, and you had a lot of people change their votes from Trump and from Trump to Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey. So the top line conclusion here for me is that pollsters should not be adjusting their samples to be representative by past vote if they’re benchmark is past presidential elections, and they’re not in a presidential election. When they do that, they will probably underestimate Democrats.
November 8, 2025 at 8:13 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

Why would a group of shareholders vote to give away most of their upside in a car company that no long makes money on car sales because #ElonMusk prefers fascism to business?

What do they think he is going to do?

Or are they all going to start selling. 🤔
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/gross-profit
November 7, 2025 at 8:28 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

Loving @andrewrsorkin.bsky.social 1929... in his voice
November 7, 2025 at 4:00 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

U Michigan Index of Consumer Expectations and Current Conditions - 50 years worth
https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chiceh.pdf https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chicch.pdf
November 7, 2025 at 3:17 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
for every occasion there is a gif
October 28, 2025 at 6:21 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
October 27, 2025 at 9:12 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

Here's a doozy of a warning sign.

Argentina got $20B and all that was good for was a few weeks reprieve.

If intervention doesn't work, watch out below.

See also BNP Paribas.
https://www.google.com/search?q=us%24+to+argentina+peso&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS807US807&oq=us
October 20, 2025 at 12:16 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

If you ask AI, however, construction spending is SURGING, based on announcements from the guys in charge of programming #AI
AI Overview Corporate spending on non-IT infrastructure, which includes areas like transportation, energy, and physical construction, is surging, particularly in strategic sectors like clean technology, semiconductors, and manufacturing. This is being driven by several key trends, including a rapid increase in AI-related data center construction, manufacturing onshoring, and the global energy transition. Overall spending trends Massive capital projects: McKinsey estimates that a cumulative $106 trillion will need to be invested in infrastructure through 2040. A significant portion of this will be driven by private-sector companies constructing physical assets to support their growth. AI drives physical construction: The enormous power and cooling demands of AI data centers have created a building boom in physical infrastructure. McKinsey highlights five archetypes of AI investors, including builders (construction firms and developers) and energizers (utilities and power providers), who are investing billions in new facilities and power infrastructure. Onshoring boosts manufacturing: Trends toward industrial onshoring and "nearshoring" are driving a surge in U.S. manufacturing construction and related logistics infrastructure. Government incentives: Government policies are encouraging investment in strategic sectors. Private investors have committed over $525 billion in U.S. strategic sectors, including clean tech and manufacturing, since 2021.
October 19, 2025 at 3:46 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

Addendum: The Dems were in charge in 2009 and 2021 after the 2 most recent credit contractions.

With the GOP and their deficit phobics in charge today the US might get a taste of forced, extended liquidation as Steve Scalise channels his inner Andrew Mellon.
October 17, 2025 at 9:44 AM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

@adamtooze.bsky.social Crashed is always worth a revisit when credit conditions look shaky.

Admittedly, Bessent is no Geithner.

Further, #Trump 's love of extracting concessions will add a new twist if credit markets really seize up.

And China is an unlikely buyer of USTs.
mechanics that all too often escape fiscal hawks, who view the public budget like that of a private household. When the private sector is undergoing a shock episode of deleveraging, when the savings rate is surging as it was in 2009, what is needed to preserve the overall financial balance of the national economy is not for the state to cut its deficit too. Everyone cannot save at once without provoking a recession. As the proponents of “functional finance” have argued since the 1940s, the state must act as a borrower of last resort.26 In so doing it preserves aggregate demand and provides a flow of safe long-term bonds to financial markets. After the shock of 2008 the entire world was keener than ever to hold safe assets. A huge class of AAA-rated private label securities had shown itself to be far from safe, so the demand for Treasurys was huge. It wasn’t only Americans who wanted US government debt. As Treasury debt held by the public increased by $2.9 trillion between the summer of 2007 and the end of 2009, foreign buyers took more than half. Chinese holdings of Treasurys increased by $418 billion. Tooze, Adam. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (p. 285). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
October 17, 2025 at 9:24 AM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

play along at home while Scott Bessent proves he wasn't part of Soros' team at Quantum who famously bet against the Bank of England defending a very overvalued GBP in the ERM in 1992

The number to remember is 1420

Check in next week
https://www.google.com/search?q=argentine+peso+to+usd&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS807US807&oq=argentine+peso+to&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDwgAEAAYRhiCAhixAxiABDIPCAAQABhGGIICGLEDGIAEMgYIARBFGDkyBwgCEAAYgAQyBwgDEAAYgAQyBwgEEAAYgAQyBwgFEAAYgAQyBwgGEAAYgAQyBwgHEAAYgAQyBwgIEAAYgAQyBwgJEAAYgATSAQkxMDg2M2owajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
October 11, 2025 at 9:31 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
Fitzgerald vs Halligan
October 8, 2025 at 2:24 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#Phillies

Baseball on the beach in Cape May.
October 6, 2025 at 10:20 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

I asked #DeepSeek and #ChatGPT

"will China or the US be the dominant economic power in the year 2050"
This is from DeepSeek This is from ChatGPT
October 6, 2025 at 9:08 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

@josephpolitano.bsky.social Substack on AI Capex is worth a read. www.apricitas.io/p/the-tariff...

#OpenAi has very limited plans to power its 10GW build (see below)

Is this a blame seeking game by AI CEOs.

"Sorry, your tariffs killed our hopes for #AGI"
October 6, 2025 at 5:18 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#Phillies

I love Cape May
October 3, 2025 at 2:29 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

Preparing for politicised dollar liquidity - on.ft.com/4pPdCOz

At some point in the not too distant Trump's gang will pull the wrong block out of our Jenga economy.

Politicizing Fed support would greatly hasten our exit as issuer of the world's reserve currency
A pressing question, no longer just whispered in official circles, is how the international system would cope if the US Federal Reserve — its independence under fire and subject to political pressure — were less willing, or less able, to provide dollar liquidity in a crisis. When a “swap” isn’t a swap, it’s a political signal The Trump administration’s announcement of US financial support to Argentina illustrates a related concern. President Trump and Treasury secretary Scott Bessent have described the arrangement as a “swap.” But in fact, while details remain scarce, what Treasury is likely to offer Argentina is not a “swap” at all, but rather a loan from the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF). Central banks extend swap lines to one another; finance ministries do not. The distinction matters. Swap lines are meant to provide rapid, depoliticised liquidity to stabilise global markets. By contrast, the ESF is a discretionary fiscal tool, putting taxpayer funds at risk.
October 2, 2025 at 11:40 AM
capemaydave.bsky.social
October 1, 2025 at 4:02 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky #AI #META

Big brother, having provided the human-ish, likable, encouraging chatbot will be monitoring the conversations ITS program will be seducing you to have.

To advertise goods and ideas and votes.

Fear not. Meta is being "super transparent" about this. 🙃

on.ft.com/42Zg3Et
Meta will use conversations people have with its chatbots to personalise advertising and content across its platforms, in a sign of how tech companies plan to make money from artificial intelligence. The owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp on Wednesday said it would use the content of chats with its Meta AI to create advertising recommendations across its suite of apps. “People will already expect that their Meta AI interactions are being used for these personalisation purposes,” said Christy Harris, privacy and data policy manager at Meta. Harris said the move was a “natural progression of our personalisation efforts” and that the company wanted to be “super transparent . . . before we actually begin using this data in a new way”.
October 1, 2025 at 1:14 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
it's been gestating a long time, and now emerging in full

Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush - Oct. 17, 2004

(gift article) tiny.cc/is8t001
September 30, 2025 at 3:41 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

And how is Trump able to steamroll America's Founding Principles?

Simple.

Americans with power to move the electoral needle like stock market money.

And never in living memory has more money been bet on one man continuing to goose the market higher.
US Equity Holding as % of Household Wealth.
September 23, 2025 at 3:25 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

President Xi on TikTok during call with Trump (below). Not sure Trump understood him.

He seems to think it's his to do with as he pleases.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/174029354
September 22, 2025 at 6:48 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

Fascinating. I went to the source to check out the report.

Worth a look: www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/...
Federal Reserve Report on Wealth Distribution. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/compare/chart/
September 20, 2025 at 7:24 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
AVENGERS!
September 19, 2025 at 7:26 PM
capemaydave.bsky.social
#EconSky

A Lehman Brothers memorial PDF dump
on.ft.com/4pu4ZsQ

ps are you feeling cozy now knowing many who screwed up just kept working in the same field
https://on.ft.com/4pu4ZsQ
September 15, 2025 at 8:40 PM