Sounds good and really super scary...a perfect news story headline to sell news. Dig a little deeper and you will find corporate debt is a big fat meh right now. Hint: If I make $100K a year and my credit card balance goes up by an astounding factor of 10 do I have a problem? Answer: It depends...w...

So sell now, re-buy, and pay the tax? Pretty much, yeah. All my taxable holdings are ETF's so it's basically place a sell order, then 10 seconds later placing a buy order (after setting aside ~15% of the gain). Obviously one would always take any losses they can to balance it out , and years where ...

I don’t need tax advice. I know how to calculate the taxes on each transaction. What I need is an inventory program to keep track of the basis for each lot of each item, e. g. I have 3 lots of 100g bars with 2 bars in the first lot, 4 bars in the second, and 3 bars in the third. The basis is $1800 ...

Yeah, I think like Xan mentioned it's likely to even out in the end. You have a little leverage in the short term in that 15% of your gains are technically uncle Sam's money, but if rates stay the same 15% of your gains periodically should equal to 15% of your gains later. I also think an argument c...

It's an interesting idea. Not only do you avoid cap gains at potentially higher rates in future, but you set yourself up for useful tax loss harvesting by resetting the basis to a high level. If you're in a high tax bracket, that $3000 offset to ordinary income is well worth prepaying some tax. Jus...

Yep, concerned about their banks. I wonder if EWC is a 1st world way to play EM... the yearly returns are 97% correlated with VWO! I am semi-dismayed that EM ETFs carry so much China. Seems like an overconcentration. Yeah, I think if you want some EM ex-china exposure and don't want to be too overl...

I have a rough spreadsheet I use for this, but not something worth sharing. I'm really just tracking all the info for each lot purchased and sold. It's quite easy to do (provided you have all the info on all your past lots). You don't have to do FIFO, you can sell from whatever lot(s) you want. Whic...

My accountant actually recommends his clients take their long term capitol gains whenever they can because the current left wing political landscape is likely to go after the long term capitol gains rate at some point. In his opinion it's better to pay your taxes now at the guaranteed 15% rate than...

In his opinion it's better to pay your taxes now at the guaranteed 15% rate than risk being stuck with too much in gains to sell when/if they jack the rates up. So sell now, re-buy, and pay the tax? Pretty much, yeah. All my taxable holdings are ETF's so it's basically place a sell order, then 10 s...

After years and years of underperformance relative to SPY, you'd think there is a value investing story in the iShares Canada ETF, EWC. EWC hasn't gone anywhere in 11+ years. I'll bet people despise it. Maybe when there is a comeback pending for oil, timber, mining... EWC would be a way to buy a na...

My accountant actually recommends his clients take their long term capitol gains whenever they can because the current left wing political landscape is likely to go after the long term capitol gains rate at some point. In his opinion it's better to pay your taxes now at the guaranteed 15% rate than ...

I’m going to break ranks with this thread, by the vast majority of objective economic indicators the US is doing extremely well right now. Inflation is low (with NO deflation) wages are up, unemployment is down, corporate profits are doing quite well, tax receipts are up. It’s quite easy to receive...

Well, that in a nutshell is why the West is going down the tubes. Everything is polarized left and right, no one is willing to compromise or entertain alternative points of view, and the people in the middle (who are probably closest to reality) are grossly outnumbered and ignored. Haha, truth righ...

Both of these go hand in hand. You are not going to convince people to have more kids; it's a different country than in 1900. But if you are going to have immigration, which I am fine with, it has to be legal and selective, i.e., productive intelligent people who will be contributors to the economy...

This situation strikes me as being like that of a poor soul diagnosed with prostate cancer. Do you remain vigilant and simply monitor, or do you treat? There are arguments for doing both. That is indeed a very good analogy. Of course, one side of the body cannot wage war on the other side of the bo...

The future is Japan. Fed's gonna buy stocks in the next asset price downturn, like Japan's doing now. MMT is just semantics, we already print money, MMT is a moral crusade from a few economists who get triggered when politicians say "but there isnt enough cash for that social program" UBI...

Now that we've kind of looked that the fundamental aspect of the dollar being a debt instrument, we can look at the technical aspect of money creation. In our current system as you alluded money is created through issuing bonds. The only way to keep the money supply the same is to keep the debt lev...

I'm not sure what it will take to finally get through to these central banks that buying financial assets does not increase inflation... all attempts to increase inflation this way have failed yet they still keep trying.

Yeah, I think that having opposing opinions in the think tank is an incredibly valuable thing. If this were censoring him based solely on his opinion I would be against it, but it's not. There's a difference between making an opposing argument and spewing public toxicity into the community on a regu...

Optics. If the gov said "we'll just print money" what do you think would happen to faith in the dollar? This is why MMT is getting pushback from economists. It's a bit more than just optics, although it certainly is easier to comprehend using the mental model of optics. To get to the hear...

As far as my second question then, how did this country grow for over 100 years with a "national debt" that pretty much stayed constant as a percentage of gdp at around 30%. Whereas the last 60 years has seen it spike to three times that level? I already answered that question above... th...

Or just leave the "money" sitting in a non interest bearing account for me at the treasury. I mean the only difference between and bond and currency is that it is printed on different paper and one bears interest and the other doesn't. At that point "debt" becomes "deposit&...

. so government debt really is an absolute necessary in a fiat world, and the U.S. especially is dependent on debt, without debt the whole system would implode. Is it "debt" that is necessary...or money supply? Why are we calling this "debt"? It carries so many negative connotat...

Ill look into that dalio piece. I guess what I dont understand is that if I purchase a ten year bond and it matures. The treasury doesnt have to pay me anything other than the principal. They dont have to issue another bond. So I would then in essense be holding the value of that bond in currency. ...

The government can always print the money to pay their debts, so long as those debts are denominated in their national currency, which all of the U.S. debt is. Is there a level where debt suddenly matters? I'm sure there is, but Japan makes us look restrained in comparison and they're still chugging...