Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

As for what I am doing in the stock market. I have been in the S&P double inverse fund, SDS, for 4 years (approximately). With interest rates up, an SDS account with reinvested dividends has gained a little when the market is steady, about 4%. That's based on the volatility that has actually been experienced; due to volatility it doesn't gain as much as the advertised dividend.

When the market was going down or sometimes even when it dipped hard, I would take profits and withdraw them. That hasn't happened much since late 2023. Since late 2023, I've been almost 100% in SDS and only traded it a little last year. In that time since late 2023, my account has lost about half.

Now for the reason I am talking about this today. In the past day, I have added to my account for the first time in 4 years. Tomorrow morning I will be adding again. In all, I will be adding about 25% to my account this week and all of it will go into SDS. If the market stays steady or rises, I will continue adding, but less than this week. 5-10% per month, something like that.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sun Feb 01, 2026 6:18 pm Manipulation and fraud are the biggest businesses in America today, and waddling up to the window for a bailout is the most in-demand job skill in America today.

The market manipulation question

And then there is the question that social media is obsessed with: “market manipulation.” Sahm is careful with the term.

“That’s a very specific thing,” she said; it denotes whether or not someone on the inside can time trades based on the information they exclusively have.

And to be sure, insider trading may have been part of some of the big swings. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating at least two instances where oil futures volume surged in the minutes before Trump announced major Iran policy pivots, according to Bloomberg.

But broadly, of the question of jawboning, Sahm says it’s not so unusual.

“There is a conversation he’s having with markets, and he’s listening to markets,” she said of the president. Trump’s maximalist style—threaten annihilation, then walk it back, then threaten again—has trained investors to buy the dip on the retreat, because the retreat always comes.

“Investors who missed out on the post-Liberation Day recovery because they got scared don’t want to miss out this time,” Sahm said. “As soon as it looked like the worst case was off the table, the stock market was just off and running.”

But Sahm offered one note of caution that runs counter to the rally.

“I kind of worry about the day where markets completely ignore him,” she said, “because then we’re in a place where this has really gone off the road.”

This is from Claudia Sahm of the "Sahm Rule". So that's one aspect of it - training market participants to behave as and to be no smarter than Pavlov's Dogs. And in the last sentence she finds a way to imply that it is a very large part of the equation without having to say it.

In another part of the article the ramifications for the economy of it being a large part of the equation.

Who actually owns the rally

It’s also worth asking who, exactly, is long the S&P at 7,000. The wealthiest 10% of American households own roughly 93% of equities. Bank of America’s own research team published a chart this week that drew the K in its starkest terms: Discretionary spending among higher-income households is actually rising, buoyed by tax refunds from last year’s One Big Beautiful Budget Act...

Also,

Which raises another question: If the American consumer is running out of road, and the S&P’s forward earnings estimates assume she isn’t, what happens when the two have to meet? “We’re in a place where there’s enough broad-based slowing that I expect this to make a dent in consumer spending,” Sahm said. “That could be a speed bump for the stock market, and that is not my impression of what is baked into the earnings estimates.”

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Aug 02, 2025 2:48 pm No worries, just a speed bump. The Boomers have been hitting speed bumps at full speed since, oh, about the time of Woodstock.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... 76321&ei=9

US consumer sentiment just hit its lowest level since 1952. Not 2008. Not the stagflation of the 1970s. 1952. T

For those who seen this heading in and actually did something you are way ahead of these Socialist craven fools
who purported anything to value added.
Uniparty is and will increase your headwinds since they do do and will not do anything as value added or actually sane.
Lie cheat steal burn loot murder is all they provided. They are not democrats for much longer than you are deceived.
They cannot contend with the Watchmen. Proof that the 51 pole dancers are not in chains is the fact.
They serve darkness and they damned well know it.

The lipstick period.

Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:32 pm
Random samples from the alleged deplorables as they the Alinsky, Gramsci with the Kalergi fools took you out.
The Authoritarian Personality, which was written by Adorno and appeared in 1950. It was part of a series called Studies in Prejudice, produced by the Frankfurt school, which included titles like Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder. The Authoritarian Personality was particularly influential because, according to Prof. MacDonald, the American Jewish Committee heavily funded its promotion and because Jewish academics took up its message so enthusiastically.
The book's purpose is to make every group affiliation sound as if it were a sign of mental disorder. Everything from patriotism to religion to family -- and race -- loyalty are signs of a dangerous and defective "authoritarian personality." Because drawing distinctions between different groups is illegitimate, all group loyalties -- even close family ties! -- are "prejudice." As Christopher Lasch has written, the book leads to the conclusion that prejudice "could be eradicated only by subjecting the American people to what amounted to collective psychotherapy -- by treating them as inmates of an insane asylum."
The first attempt was 1986 on our group. It was a graduate student from Cornell. The internalized drones fell head first.
Baudrillard was absolutely correct. “Information devours its own content.

After teaching two years at the University of Frankfurt, Adorno immigrated to England in 1934 to escape the Nazi persecution of the Jews. He taught at the University of Oxford for three years and then went to the United States (1938), where he worked at Princeton (1938–41) and then was codirector of the Research Project on Social Discrimination at the University of California, Berkeley (1941–48). Adorno and his colleague Max Horkheimer returned to the University of Frankfurt in 1949. There they rebuilt the Institute for Social Research and revived the Frankfurt school of critical theory.
Originally it was located at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), an attached institute at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The Institute was founded in 1923 thanks to a donation by Felix Weil with the aim of developing Marxist studies in Germany.
As I checked the decades on the human toll from 1945 to 1955 the death count to facts from the 1935 to 1945 was fertile for the narratives say for instance the silent weapons of the silent war, or if so inclined the long march for those who wave banners of stupidity's.
They concluded a Marxist Communist revolution would likely not be possible in the West because of the Western culture and the Christian religion that dominated it.

They concluded both should be destroyed.

The paper of that period study was forwarded as the Keynesian Veil when the actual smart money was attacked as a liquidity pump failure.
The preservation of capital was ignored as multi faceted deprivation we listed had been pushed aside.
Numerous studies indicated this from NBER and Benn Steil and the planned democide recorded from Sean Mcmeekin.
Dr. Anthony Sutton work focused the intent and interpretation of the transitions debauchery's.
Keynes was unable and unwilling to negate Von Mises Tome of Human Action. From all intent and purposes even FDR supported the
point when and why to tap the brakes on imposition structural inflation. For those that stocked up for stagflation remember that some
are from the fact of a standard they cannot fathom and are not allowed to understand anyways.
Not saying the Fugger model is the best as it hinges on competency as forwarded 4 legs of the chair.
Bond-Metals-Real Estate-Stock.. They do not even pretend to care or even will.

“We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying,
we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Our group was allowed in after the fall. First we buried the frozen dead since we fear God first.
I can say but it matters little in the Hour since Timothy said it best and they waxed cold.
They serve darkness and no they had no plan. The resurgence of the Waffen was as real as the cold still evil night
they had no plan other than the consequences the innocent suffered.

Klingberg cycle of political deviants dated as Uniparty destroyed all and any ability to negate the criminals as
the taxpayers are financially destroyed. This Cantillon effect under way is rather clear.
Tiny bubbles was a map not ignorance.

Operation white crow won the discussion and I will link it for our collective edification also.
I was reviewing OLD53 advise on a view and he was correct
in Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski real time study to survive policy strains released on a population.

There are times, men and events about which History alone can record the final judgments; contemporaries and individual observers must only write what they have seen and heard. The very truth demands it. Titus Livious.
Two links will cover it for know and it was a texture moment.
The pretext root of the discussion was Human Action. You can search that keyword on your query to effects.
And remember, there are some people who think the “UniParty” isn’t real.
Why is not even a thought and just when. Fri Oct 26, 2012 3:48 pm

thread: AA-1025, 270, isa55, peleg, white crow

water wheat weather

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2026 12:13 am One way for someone to wrap their head around just how big manipulation and fraud are in this economy is to read what the Austrian economists have to say. Before moving onto other discussion about manipulation and fraud, I will find the most relevant quotes from the Austrians that I am able to.

This is from Google AI, and I really should look up the specific quotes as intended...

"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." — Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (1949).

Door number 2 is where we're headed.

Looking at the archives, aeden quoted this from Mises in 2009 and 2020. Also we've discussed how the credit expansion was voluntarily abandoned in the 1930s.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2026 12:13 am Malinvestment: Capital flows into projects that are not supported by real resources or consumer demand—such as long-term housing projects, high-tech ventures, or speculative businesses—which would not be profitable at natural interest rates.

If these malinvestments cited by the Austrians really are malinvestments, it would be reasonable to think that spending on lobbying would be highest for these categories of businesses. While they don't match perfectly, there is a lot of overlap.

Lobbying Client Total Spent

US Chamber of Commerce $72,140,000
National Assn of Realtors $54,361,910
Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America $38,185,000
Business Roundtable $33,500,000
American Hospital Assn $32,007,784
Blue Cross/Blue Shield $27,903,633
Meta $26,290,000
American Medical Assn $23,787,645
AARP $20,860,000
General Motors $19,720,000
American Chemistry Council $19,130,123
Amazon.com $18,865,000
CTIA $18,690,000
America's Health Insurance Plans $17,230,000
Alphabet Inc $16,540,000
Lockheed Martin $15,676,909

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lob ... p-spenders

The preponderance of health and health insurance related lobbying has to do with the price of health care being unsustainable and the percentage of the economy devoted to health care being unsustainable. If individuals were paying their health care providers directly, health care might be 10 to 20 percent of its current cost and percentage of GDP. GDP would shrink over 10% due to that alone.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sun Feb 01, 2026 6:18 pm Manipulation and fraud are the biggest businesses in America today, and waddling up to the window for a bailout is the most in-demand job skill in America today.

One way for someone to wrap their head around just how big manipulation and fraud are in this economy is to read what the Austrian economists have to say. Before moving onto other discussion about manipulation and fraud, I will find the most relevant quotes from the Austrians that I am able to.

This is from Google AI, and I really should look up the specific quotes as intended, but this summary closely matches my recollection and will allow me to proceed to other related discussion.

Austrian economists, such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, argue that central bank "money printing" (artificial credit expansion) is the root cause of the business cycle, transforming an economy into a landscape of unsustainable, "fraudulent," or "malinvested" businesses that eventually must collapse.
.
According to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT), this process unfolds in distinct phases:

1. The Artificial Boom (Money Printing)

Artificial Lowering of Interest Rates: When central banks increase the money supply (print money) or lower interest rates without a corresponding increase in real savings, they disrupt the market's natural coordination.

False Signaling: Artificially low rates act as a false signal, tricking entrepreneurs into believing that society is willing to defer consumption and invest long-term.

Malinvestment: Capital flows into projects that are not supported by real resources or consumer demand—such as long-term housing projects, high-tech ventures, or speculative businesses—which would not be profitable at natural interest rates.

2. How Fraudulent/Unsustainable Businesses Flourish

Easy Credit Fuel: These businesses are often "fraudulent" in the sense that they are "malinvestments"—they exist only because of the artificially cheap capital, rather than demand for their products.

"Cluster of Errors": Murray Rothbard described this as a "cluster of errors" where the artificial boom lures many businessmen to make the same mistake simultaneously.

Inevitability of Participation: In an inflationary environment, businesses often must adopt reckless, debt-dependent behaviors to survive competition, relying on the influx of new money to keep their valuations high.

Neglect of Real Savings: True entrepreneurship is replaced by financial engineering, where firms prioritize financial manipulation and debt-financed expansion over real value creation.

3. The Collapse and Necessary Adjustment

The Day of Reckoning: The boom is unsustainable because the "real" resources to complete all projects do not exist. As the new money spreads, prices rise and interest rates eventually increase, exposing the malinvestments.

The Bust is a Cure: Austrians argue that the "recession" or "bust" is actually the necessary, curative process of correcting the mistakes made during the boom.

Bankruptcies and Liquidation: Fraudulent, unsustainable businesses cannot survive without the artificial credit. They go bankrupt, and resources are freed up to be reallocated toward more productive uses.

Rejection of Intervention: Austrian economists, contrary to mainstream views, argue against further stimulus or bailouts, believing these actions only prolong the "malinvestments" and cause even more severe future collapses.

In summary, for Austrian economists, printing money does not create wealth; it merely redistributes it while creating an artificial, unsustainable boom that must inevitably break when the reality of limited resources asserts itself.

aedens wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2026 11:37 pm Escape velocity will not be viable for the majority...Tainter and Dimond stated one day it just simply ceased.

The Roman soldiers were at Hadrian's Wall and one day walked away when they didn't get paid.

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Jun 17, 2014 11:50 pm

In 401 or 402 Stilicho faced wars with the Visigothic king Alaric and the Ostrogothic king Radagaisus. Needing military manpower, he stripped Hadrian's Wall of troops for the final time. 402 is the last date of any Roman coinage found in large numbers in Britain, suggesting either that Stilicho also stripped the remaining troops from Britain, or that the Empire could no longer afford to pay the troops who were still there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_Rom ... in_Britain

The scenario that virtually nobody is prepared for is one day the grocery shelves go empty never to be restocked again.

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2026 2:45 pm https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comme ... are_button

The post I'm pointing to will be highlighted in yellow.

I'm a US "government insider"...FWIW, famine in the US is not on our radar anytime soon... at least not from a food availability standpoint.

It'll be difficult enough under the slow wasting scenario.

Higgenbotham wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2026 9:45 am First there was United Health and now this. Let's see if this possible incipient trend accelerates as they further tighten the screws, which they most certainly will.

As they tighten the screws and people find ways to get even, their response is, "We are suffering from "upward bullying" - isn't this just awful?" Like I said, expect them to go into denial so they can justify further tightening the screws.

A global survey of executives finds a little-discussed form of workplace abuse is rising—and many leaders say they get no help when it happens.

Much attention in recent years has justifiably been focused on the harm that toxic workplaces inflict on employees, especially when spiteful, manipulative, or abusive managers are responsible. But new study data indicates a far less acknowledged form of professional mistreatment is on the rise—one known as the upward bullying of people in leadership roles by their subordinates.

That flipping of roles in the typical toxic workplace scenario was quantified by Australian business consultancy Maureen Kyne, whose global survey questioned leaders in roles from middle managers to CEOs and board members. Responses contained alarming insights into the upward-bullying trend, as well as first-hand accounts that were remarkably consistent despite differences in company size, sector, or nationality—including U.S. participants, who made up nearly 20 percent of the total. Fully 71 percent of all respondents reported having personally experienced upward bullying, with nearly three-quarters saying the abuse is becoming more frequent.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbu ... e475&ei=19

tim wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2026 1:27 pm https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/breaki ... -collapses

BREAKING: U.S. Fertility Rate Collapses to Lowest Level Ever Recorded

A new CDC report confirms America is now reproducing at the lowest rate in recorded history, with fertility dropping 5.7% since 2021 alone.

Here is the line from the Washington Post. What they don't seem to want to highlight is infertility is affecting 1 in 7 and rising.

The U.S. fertility rate hit a historic low.

According to the CDC: Fewer teenagers and young women had babies in 2025, driving the decrease. Studies show economic pressures are also leading to delayed parenthood.

It’s a political flashpoint: Some conservatives worry that lower fertility rates will lead to population decline. But others think the trend is a sign that women have more reproductive choice.

Read this story

What is the long term trend in infertility rates for couples?

AI Overview

The long-term trend in infertility rates for couples is upward, showing a substantial increase in prevalence globally over the past three decades. While total fertility rates (the number of children born) are falling worldwide, the involuntary inability to conceive (infertility) has simultaneously risen, affecting an estimated 1 in 7 couples today.

Key trends and data regarding the long-term rise in infertility include:

Global Increase (1990–2021): A comprehensive study using 2021 Global Burden of Disease data found that the number of infertility cases increased by approximately 75% for men and over 84% for women between 1990 and 2021.

Rising Burden on Couples: In the United States, the percentage of married women (ages 15–49) with impaired fecundity (difficulty conceiving or carrying a pregnancy) has risen to around 13%–16%. After two years of trying, approximately 10% of couples still have not achieved a successful pregnancy.

"Infertility Trap" Projection: Studies suggest that if trends continue, the burden of infertility—particularly measured by age-standardized prevalence rates—will continue to rise, with a significant increase in the number of couples seeking infertility treatment.

Drivers of the Long-Term Trend

Several factors contribute to the long-term increase in infertility:

Delayed Childbearing: Couples are waiting longer to start families, often until their 30s or later, which aligns with the natural decline in egg quality and ovarian reserve, particularly after age 35.

Lifestyle Factors: Rising rates of obesity are directly linked to ovulatory dysfunction in women (e.g., PCOS) and decreased sperm quality in men.

Environmental and Health Factors: Increased exposure to environmental toxins (pesticides, endocrine disruptors) and a rise in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) that can cause pelvic inflammatory disease and fallopian tube damage.

Male Fertility Decline: Studies suggest a secular decline in semen quality and testosterone levels in men over the past few decades.

Regional and Social Variations

While the trend is generally upward, it varies by region:

Developed Nations: Some high-income regions have seen a stabilization or slight decrease in primary infertility, potentially due to better access to treatment or a lowered, intentional choice to not have children.

Developing Nations: Infertility prevalence has shown sharp increases in areas like South Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, particularly among women.

Note: Infertility is defined by the CDC as the inability to get pregnant after one year of unprotected sex (or 6 months for women over 35).