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Those who have borrowed money benefit from inflation though. If you have student loans or a mortgage, high inflation can work to effectively reduce how much you owe if salaries/wages go up with inflation.

Wealthy people own assets that keep up with inflation. They may have 10% in cash which doesn’t keep up with inflation but in general most of their holdings either keep up or outperform inflation. Poor people have wages that don’t keep up with inflation unless they start job hopping. The poor are typically more affected by inflation than the rich.

This reminds me of my neighbor who had recently retired and began a side business making furniture in his garage. He was just looking to make a little beer money, but his business grew quickly just through word of mouth and he was complaining to me that now it was more of a job than he had before he retired. He was thinking about shutting the whole thing down.

I've always thought this would be best. I recently saw signs instructing people to wait to merge in Duluth MN when I was visiting for work. People weren't abiding by the signs though and continued to behave in the normal random way they typically do when merging.

I remember seeing an article about a long term study of former participants of the show "The Biggest Loser." If I recall, almost all of them had gained the weight back and due to the extreme caloric restrictions they had placed on themselves during their time on the show the reduced their base metabolic rate significantly.

When you say "trapped at the zero bound" are you saying the control output is saturated basically? I'm thinking in terms of feedback control loops. I would agree that the FOMC doesn't have a lot of room to work with if we were to enter another downturn but they do have some range left in their controller. During the last downturn they reduced the federal funds rates to 0% and that stayed there for years but they are now back up to 2.4% I think. When dropping rates to 0% wasn't enough in 2008 they also reduced longer term rates by buying Treasury securities (operation twist etc). The ended up adding $4.5T of Treasury securities to their balance sheet by the end of it. They have been unwinding those positions for over a year now but the balance is only slightly less than $4T. So I guess one could say there isn't much left in the accelerator pedal if we need it again. Especially given the recent tax reductions while the economy was already improving. That's just one less tool that can be used for the next time. Hopefully we won't have a next time until the Fed is able to get rates over 5% and the Fed balance sheet under $1T. https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

I'm waiting for an electric Toyota Tacoma. Meanwhile, I drive a Civic. It's not too bad, but it only gets 34.2 mpg (long term average) with 80% highway driving. I may need to review my driving habits though. I got used to 51 mpg with my Jetta TDI but they were cheating of course.

Apparently the president of the SIPC stated that Robinhood didn't contact the SIPC before making their announcement. The SIPC president Stephen Harbeck is on record saying that "SIPC protects cash that is deposited with a brokerage firm for one limited purpose... the purpose of purchasing securities. Cash deposited for other reasons would not be protected. SIPC does not protect checking and savings accounts since the money has not been deposited for a protected purpose."

He later stated that the SEC would need to take the lead on clarifying the matter though.

I have a one-year emergency fund with Robinhood that is invested in index funds (secondary emergency fund as the primary emergency fund is in cash). I think I'll keep my primary emergency fund in the PNC high yield savings account for now until all that gets worked out.

I've been listening to How I Built That with Guy Raz lately too. Also a good podcast. I spend a lot of time in my car so good podcasts help keep my sanity.

I came here to post that same link. It was an interesting Planet Money episode.

I wasn't familiar with Chandra. Just listened to a few songs. I think she sort of has a Siouxsie and the Banshees vibe. Now I want to go listen to Cities in Dust but it's too late for that today.

I agree. A financial guru I've listened to off and on for many years is Clark Howard and he suggests always using a financial advisor that you pay outright with fiduciary responsibility. His favorite recommendation is to talk to someone from the Garrett Planning Network. If you aren't paying upfront you are paying far more in bad investment advice that isn't designed to make you money. Think bad investments that offer kickbacks to your "advisor."

A few years ago I was watching a movie at my parents' house during a visit over the holidays and I noticed something wasn't right. I kept saying the video motion was strange and apparently nobody else thought anything was strange. When we paused for a drink refresh I played with the settings and found the clear motion which I turned off. Problem solved. Nobody else thought it looked any different.

Or in perpetuity it could be about 4% of 1.8B per year. Which is only 360 students per class though (assuming a 4 year scholarship). Maybe that's 360 kids that wouldn't have otherwise been able to go to Johns Hopkins.

I'm surprised there was no mention about insurance and billing requirements, etc.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I'm pretty sure from that point on I started going down the same rabbit hole as the protagonist. The results of that are a bit of a mixed bag to be honest, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I've often wondered how feasible it would be to combine thermal storage with battery storage and solar energy production. During the winter such a system could heat water while producing excess solar power and during the summer maybe produce ice with excess solar power during. I wonder if that could be more efficient than storing chemical energy through batteries alone.

I'm visiting Toronto and nobody here at the bar had heard this yet.

I had heard from a third party vendor on the site that Profibus issues (for communication to drives) was one of the major issues at site. I wonder if that was accurate or still true if so.

I can't stand it, I know you planned it... gotta set straight this Watergate.

The wait staff at the restaurants usually don't get tipped on those kinds of orders either. And in most of the US the wait staff are only making $2.13 an hour or something like that.

Until recently we had a few families in my neighborhood that had kids that played outside just like my brothers and I did as kids. They all recently upgraded their homes and moved out of the neighborhood though. Those kids were my dog's best buddies.

Your comment made me think of the Our Lady Peace album "Spiritual Machines."

I'm smashed into an airplane right now waiting for boarding to finish. I can't imagine planes being any more cramped than they are now.

I would ditto that for sure. It can work out well for some but in my case it was a bad call. That was probably the worst decision I've ever made. I went to a good state school for undergrad, but I always wanted to go somewhere more prestigious. Nobody in my family had gone somewhere like that before. I didn't end up impressing anyone.

That's exactly how I felt getting off of Effexor. I stopped taking them completely one day and after trying to push past the zaps for two weeks I got back on them. I had to get of them gradually by splitting the pills open and splitting up the little balls instead.

Been there...done that. It doesn't help that the cuisine is so delicious.

So I couldn't resist adding this link to the SNL sketch of "The Bidet":

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/bidet/n12737?sn...

It was funny to see this HN post tonight. This week I'm doing upgrades to the DCS (distributed control system) operator stations at one of the largest tissue manufacturing sites in the US. I was just telling my fiancé how funny the security is here. You would think they were enriching uranium.

When I first got into the paper industry, which resulted from coming out of grad school during the Great Recession, I thought i would be a top performer within six months. I have to admit though that it took me longer to be proficient in my current position than it did in my former position as a metrology engineer in a semiconductor fab. There is more technology in the paper industry than one might assume.

Scorpions - Winds of Change is the first thing that came to my mind when you mentioned whistling.