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He's an analyst trying to reason about the near term future of the global economy, backing up his arguments with data. That's his job. Your ascribing malice and

He's an analyst trying to reason about the near term future of the global economy, backing up his arguments with data. That's his job. Your ascribing malice and ill will to observations of someone who's not making decisions is a little bit silly.

newbie789 5y ago
If my job were to be to subtract all traces of humanity from language about things that directly affect countless people, I’d consider that to be ghoulish even though I was receiving a paycheck. The idea that my pointing out that something somebody said was distasteful is “a little bit silly” on the grounds that the author was paid to write those words seems… ghoulish?
- xfhgjxcfgh 5y ago
  You might want to avoid medical textbooks.
  - newbie789 5y ago
    I’ve never read a JP Morgan medical text book, but that’s a salient point.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  How is not foreclosing on seriously delinquent US homeowners and letting people go about their lives and jobs (aka COVID run rampant) in the US any worse than not building housing for homeless people in Mexico and India and not making it a priority to vaccinate the entire global population on our own dime? Why is it so evil to not give thousands of dollars to US people - but it's fine to do to non US people?
  - newbie789 5y ago
    What? Edit: I will clarify that I’ve obviously not brought up other countries covid responses. I’m literally asking why this completely new equivocation could possibly deserve my response. It’s a confusing question to me, so I’ll clarify: I do not care for this thought experiment. I did not solicit it nor will I help you out with your unrelated rhetoric.
- clusterfish 5y ago
  Sounds like you're just addicted to excessive political correctness and are shocked when it's absent from a report that has no place for it. The author's job is not to express moral stances that you agree with, but to provide accurate fact based estimates without ceremony, which they do well here.
  - newbie789 5y ago
    This is a fascinating opinion that I’ve seen various forms of. I suppose it is objectively a fact that the author believes that increasing the supply of homeless people and allowing for the spread of a pandemic will help increase financial returns for some stakeholders. Stating the ” fact“ that one believes that human life and dignity should rightly be traded for cash does not make it an objective statement that’s somehow elevated above having an obvious moral stance. Does the author have a crystal ball that shows various timelines, and he’s objectively reporting exactly what is shown? Or is this a human person with an opinion on the future from a specific viewpoint that’s necessarily influenced by his worldview?
    - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
      > Stating the "fact" that one believes that human life and dignity should rightly be traded for cash does not make it an objective statement that’s somehow elevated above having an obvious moral stance. The author is not advocating for what should be done. He's describing what he expects to happen, based on what X policy changes will affect Y result.
      - newbie789 5y ago
        You’re of the opinion that the author does have a crystal ball and is objectively relating what can be known about the future(s)? And he’s doing so in such a careful manner that he’s painstakingly taken immense care to ensure that his musings are not interpreted as prescriptive? That’s not my interpretation
        jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
- kristjansson 5y ago
  I have trouble understanding what you'd prefer. Should this analysis be more concerned with (non-financial) human impacts? More concerned with impacts on the most affected/least privileged? Should it have been written by someone else? Should it not have been written at all? Should there be no demand for it?
d3nj4l 5y ago
He's just following orders!
colinmhayes 5y ago
You think a JPMorgan analyst writing a report saying foreclosures are good for the economy doesn't have mal intent? This is like the purdue memo that says oxycodone isn't addictive.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  On one hand, yes you are right. There is consolidation bonzanza waiting to happen in housing, which honestly I am not even mad about because homeownership is a disgraceful sham and national institutional investors might be less NIMBY. On the other hand, keep in mind that kneecapping demand is orthodox macroeconomics since the 1970s for very stupid reasons. Finance people are pretty good at unlearning stupid ivory tower econ, cause stuff like "flows before pros" vs "the market efficiently allocates goods" is their day job, but sometimes it's hard to let old habits die out. (And the textbook stuff is a nice salve for feeling better about the impacts of the job, too.) See https://www.employamerica.org/researchreports/inflation-expectations/ https://www.employamerica.org/researchreports/inflation-expe... for a sketch of how normal macro is bullshit. If I sound too conspiratorial, here is https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2021062pap.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2021062pap..., a paper from a well-credentialed macroeconomicist at the fed whose sick of the bullshit. There's been good empirical work for years, and now the theory damn is finally breaking. Now, to sound much more conspiratorial after all, you can also read a prediction of the trend until from...1943. https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf Rock-bottom interest rates, UBI vs jobs guarantee, a breakdown of the full employment consensus (as occurred in the 1970s), it's all there.
  - estaseuropano 5y ago
    Home ownership used to be one of the few accessible investments that directly benefit less well off people. Rather than throw rent money in a black hole they build equity. How is that a sham?
    - californical 5y ago
      Housing cannot by definition be a good investment, without becoming gradually more scarce and unaffordable in the future. Keeping housing affordable means that it should grow with inflation, approximately. A good investment should outpace inflation.
Ericson2314 5y ago
It's bad on descriptive grounds. There is no "wage price" spiral going on. Labor is weak no it's not the 1970s. There is simply supply bottlenecks, or rather: increased demand is auditing our practices and finding the weakpoints we already had. This is a good thing. (Unless you are a lazy capitalist that just wants to maximize your effort/investment to profit ratio.) We should continue to hold up demand until the bottle necks are fixed. (This is not a "beatings will continue until moral improves" situation.) We should be thankful increased demand as clarified what investments are needed. No surprise, it's unsexy things like 200m fabs not whatever trendy shit gets the money in the asset bubble we've had the last decade. If we do anything beyond prop up demand and enacting environmental regulation, it should be puncturing the stupid asset bubble like China is doing with real estate. Getting all that crypto money to seek returns elsewhere would be a good thing.
paganel 5y ago
> global economy, backing up his arguments with data. That's his job. Your ascribing malice Only thinking about the economy while ignoring its societal by-effects is malicious by definition, unfortunately there's no need to "ascribe" anything. Time and again people tend to forget this. Related to this I highly recommend Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation" [1] which sort of addressed this phenomenon back in the 1940s: > On a broader theoretical level, the Great Transformation argues that markets can not solely be understood through economic theory. Rather, markets are embedded in social and political logics, which makes it necessary for economic analysts to take into account politics when trying to understand the economy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book...
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  What is the definition of maliciousness that you are thinking of?
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I would not ascribe malice to these people but cold heartedness and lack of empathy. One common pattern is that they usually advocate tough measures for others but not for their own class. In 2008 all financial guys suddenly told us that they need bailouts when for decades they advocated for large scale layoffs, reduction of social systems, keeping wages low and other stuff because it was “creative destruction”. But when this destruction reached themselves they suddenly needed bailouts and of course we were told it would have been immoral to take away their million dollar bonuses. A lot of these analysts are psychopaths who are capable of only looking out for themselves.

newbie789 5y ago

If my job were to be to subtract all traces of humanity from language about things that directly affect countless people, I’d consider that to be ghoulish even though I was receiving a paycheck. The idea that my pointing out that something somebody said was distasteful is “a little bit silly” on the grounds that the author was paid to write those words seems… ghoulish?

xfhgjxcfgh 5y ago
You might want to avoid medical textbooks.
- newbie789 5y ago
  I’ve never read a JP Morgan medical text book, but that’s a salient point.
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
How is not foreclosing on seriously delinquent US homeowners and letting people go about their lives and jobs (aka COVID run rampant) in the US any worse than not building housing for homeless people in Mexico and India and not making it a priority to vaccinate the entire global population on our own dime? Why is it so evil to not give thousands of dollars to US people - but it's fine to do to non US people?
- newbie789 5y ago
  What? Edit: I will clarify that I’ve obviously not brought up other countries covid responses. I’m literally asking why this completely new equivocation could possibly deserve my response. It’s a confusing question to me, so I’ll clarify: I do not care for this thought experiment. I did not solicit it nor will I help you out with your unrelated rhetoric.
clusterfish 5y ago
Sounds like you're just addicted to excessive political correctness and are shocked when it's absent from a report that has no place for it. The author's job is not to express moral stances that you agree with, but to provide accurate fact based estimates without ceremony, which they do well here.
- newbie789 5y ago
  This is a fascinating opinion that I’ve seen various forms of. I suppose it is objectively a fact that the author believes that increasing the supply of homeless people and allowing for the spread of a pandemic will help increase financial returns for some stakeholders. Stating the ” fact“ that one believes that human life and dignity should rightly be traded for cash does not make it an objective statement that’s somehow elevated above having an obvious moral stance. Does the author have a crystal ball that shows various timelines, and he’s objectively reporting exactly what is shown? Or is this a human person with an opinion on the future from a specific viewpoint that’s necessarily influenced by his worldview?
  - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
    > Stating the "fact" that one believes that human life and dignity should rightly be traded for cash does not make it an objective statement that’s somehow elevated above having an obvious moral stance. The author is not advocating for what should be done. He's describing what he expects to happen, based on what X policy changes will affect Y result.
    - newbie789 5y ago
      You’re of the opinion that the author does have a crystal ball and is objectively relating what can be known about the future(s)? And he’s doing so in such a careful manner that he’s painstakingly taken immense care to ensure that his musings are not interpreted as prescriptive? That’s not my interpretation
      - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
kristjansson 5y ago
I have trouble understanding what you'd prefer. Should this analysis be more concerned with (non-financial) human impacts? More concerned with impacts on the most affected/least privileged? Should it have been written by someone else? Should it not have been written at all? Should there be no demand for it?

d3nj4l 5y ago

He's just following orders!

colinmhayes 5y ago

You think a JPMorgan analyst writing a report saying foreclosures are good for the economy doesn't have mal intent? This is like the purdue memo that says oxycodone isn't addictive.

Ericson2314 5y ago
On one hand, yes you are right. There is consolidation bonzanza waiting to happen in housing, which honestly I am not even mad about because homeownership is a disgraceful sham and national institutional investors might be less NIMBY. On the other hand, keep in mind that kneecapping demand is orthodox macroeconomics since the 1970s for very stupid reasons. Finance people are pretty good at unlearning stupid ivory tower econ, cause stuff like "flows before pros" vs "the market efficiently allocates goods" is their day job, but sometimes it's hard to let old habits die out. (And the textbook stuff is a nice salve for feeling better about the impacts of the job, too.) See https://www.employamerica.org/researchreports/inflation-expectations/ https://www.employamerica.org/researchreports/inflation-expe... for a sketch of how normal macro is bullshit. If I sound too conspiratorial, here is https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2021062pap.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2021062pap..., a paper from a well-credentialed macroeconomicist at the fed whose sick of the bullshit. There's been good empirical work for years, and now the theory damn is finally breaking. Now, to sound much more conspiratorial after all, you can also read a prediction of the trend until from...1943. https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf Rock-bottom interest rates, UBI vs jobs guarantee, a breakdown of the full employment consensus (as occurred in the 1970s), it's all there.
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  Home ownership used to be one of the few accessible investments that directly benefit less well off people. Rather than throw rent money in a black hole they build equity. How is that a sham?
  - californical 5y ago
    Housing cannot by definition be a good investment, without becoming gradually more scarce and unaffordable in the future. Keeping housing affordable means that it should grow with inflation, approximately. A good investment should outpace inflation.

Ericson2314 5y ago

It's bad on descriptive grounds. There is no "wage price" spiral going on. Labor is weak no it's not the 1970s. There is simply supply bottlenecks, or rather: increased demand is auditing our practices and finding the weakpoints we already had. This is a good thing. (Unless you are a lazy capitalist that just wants to maximize your effort/investment to profit ratio.) We should continue to hold up demand until the bottle necks are fixed. (This is not a "beatings will continue until moral improves" situation.) We should be thankful increased demand as clarified what investments are needed. No surprise, it's unsexy things like 200m fabs not whatever trendy shit gets the money in the asset bubble we've had the last decade. If we do anything beyond prop up demand and enacting environmental regulation, it should be puncturing the stupid asset bubble like China is doing with real estate. Getting all that crypto money to seek returns elsewhere would be a good thing.

paganel 5y ago

> global economy, backing up his arguments with data. That's his job. Your ascribing malice Only thinking about the economy while ignoring its societal by-effects is malicious by definition, unfortunately there's no need to "ascribe" anything. Time and again people tend to forget this. Related to this I highly recommend Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation" [1] which sort of addressed this phenomenon back in the 1940s: > On a broader theoretical level, the Great Transformation argues that markets can not solely be understood through economic theory. Rather, markets are embedded in social and political logics, which makes it necessary for economic analysts to take into account politics when trying to understand the economy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book...

dan-robertson 5y ago
What is the definition of maliciousness that you are thinking of?

spaetzleesser 5y ago

I would not ascribe malice to these people but cold heartedness and lack of empathy. One common pattern is that they usually advocate tough measures for others but not for their own class. In 2008 all financial guys suddenly told us that they need bailouts when for decades they advocated for large scale layoffs, reduction of social systems, keeping wages low and other stuff because it was “creative destruction”. But when this destruction reached themselves they suddenly needed bailouts and of course we were told it would have been immoral to take away their million dollar bonuses. A lot of these analysts are psychopaths who are capable of only looking out for themselves.