Unemployment benefits in the USA? LOL! It’s gonna be a real shitshow when the bubble bursts.
Unemployment benefits in California are $450/week max. The average rent for a one bedroom apartment in California ranges between $2,100 and $2,460 per month, depending on the source and specific metro market.
It’s a safe bet.
The bubble will burst, that’s our boom-bust cycle. I think we’re at the point where it is always a few bad decisions away.
I’m actually impressed that it’s still going
Coincidentally, The FED was made to stop boom-bust cycles before WWI. It’s never, ever worked, and it will never start working.
The thing is the collapse is like a random chance every week/day. At some point some human being will decide fuckem im not working all weekend to bail them out again and that’s when the crash will happen. That’s literally what happened in 2008, bear sterns and Lehman brothers for decades just rolled over their debt until one day the banks were just like yeah nah we had enough go ask the govt for help and that was the crash. It easily could have happened months earlier or months later, some bank execs were just in a room and finally decided they wanted to get off the ride one and that was the day it crashed. Just human emotion at that point if it would have happened the prior month or following month instead.
Exactly this. The entire market is held together by people who are willing to bend over backwards to keep it working. And all it takes is two or three of those to decide “enough is enough” at the same time, and suddenly all of the market’s sins are laid bare. And at that point, the investors panic and everything snowballs.
just hope the crash and burn doesnt singe the rest of us
They’ve been saying the “bubble is going to burst” for a while now. If they keep saying it eventually they might be right. Then everyone will jump up and down trying to claim they were the ones who rightly predicted it. A quick search by date shows plenty of articles discussing the AI bubble from 2025, 2024, and even a rare few from 2023. Three years of doomsayers waters it down to meaninglessnes even if they‘re eventually right.
it has all the markers, unless the corporations drastically restructure their debt or the product suddenly finds an actual demonstrable use, then it’s going to continue being a bubble. all that requires for it to burst is a large swath of people vested in the bubble to get itchy enough to pull enough money out for the value to be questioned or need to be proved, and AI currently is wildly expensive incuring huge amounts of debt, which is being passed around in a very quick and difficult to account for manner, and has no proven value that can be demonstrated as of yet.
Id like to think that people are more aware of the circumstances that lead up to a bubble forming and popping.
The AI bubble will “burst” as soon as they figure out how to inflict all the damage onto regular working people. The housing bubble bursting is what enabled the ownership class to kick a bunch of working people out of their homes and then buy up all the recently vacated real estate for cheap. Nothing about the damage that the rich did to our economy caused any of them to face any actual consequences.
The promise of AI was that it would replace all the workers, but it’s not doing that fast enough and it’s beginning to look like it never will. We’ve been hearing that the AI bubble will “burst any day now” for years at this point, but if it happened right now, the ownership class are the ones who would be left holding the bag, and that can’t be allowed to happen. When they find a way to take it out of our hides, we’ll see that suddenly the “invisible hand of the free market” will present a scenario such that the floodgates open and the bloodbath is finally allowed to proceed. I imagine that’s why they started wrapping up so many pension funds and the like in AI investments.
SPCX is the model all AI companies plan follow. IP0 valuation of 2K X forward Earnings.
Your retirement fund will be the exit liquidity forced to buy through indexes as the stocks crash and flat line.
Exactly, as long as it’s billionaire buddies with trump, they can always print more money to keep the bubble going. When they realize they need to print the money to keep the rest of us afloat, that’s when they’ll let it crash.
The “invisible hand of the market” is such a fascinating myth, because it frames the results of capitalist endeavors as inevitable and almost holy - but as soon as the sufficiently wealthy and well-connected suffer a setback, then “government bailouts” are granted.
The invisible hand is actually very visible of you dare to look close enough.
The basic supply & demand, “invisible hand of the market” stuff applies at like. A farmer’s market. This is the context Adam Smith was talking about when he made up the invisible hand phrase. If one farmer has cheaper produce than another, he’ll probably get more customers. Anything more complicated than a local farmer’s market is… more complicated.
They already have. Public Banks are huge investors in the private credit companies that underpin a good amount of the AI bubble.
The Magnificent 7 have been driving the stock markets gains for the last few years. They have also created independent companies to build out the data centers. The debt for these companies is off their books and funded primarily by private credit markets and is underpinned by contracts with the big 7 for data processing once the data center is built.
Projections by the Mag 7 have driven their share increase. So what happens if one or two of the magnificent 7 miss their projections? Well look at Oracle, its stock is tanking because it missed projections.
If the Mag. 7 stock tanks so will your 401ks. When their stock is worth less they will stop plowing money into AI. Suddenly all of the companies with contracts to build the data centers will loose their source of revenue. No revenue and they can’t pay off the loans to private credit. Private credit companies will start to go under and begin to take down the public banking companies that invested in them…
Its a house of cards ready to fall if any of the Mag 7 start to flounder.
It’s a good time to learn about what investments are in your 401k if you have any. You can look at the data sheets on the investments to see what stocks the index funds are made of. I’m moving mine to International index funds that are not tech heavy. I’m no expert in investing but I have heard that it’s sound to invest in companies that make basic things that people need.
Healthcare, consumer staples and utilities are considered to be defensive stocks because they are always needed regardless of economic situation.
I am minimising my exposure to US stock market as well. There is the perception that the European stock market doesn’t have the explosive growth the way that US stocks does but it is at least safer.
Japan could also be considered safe and their stock market have been on the rise after 30 years of stagnation.
I noticed the pension fund thing and I’m scared.
ownership class
pension funds
Same thing. Pension funds ARE the ownership class.
I’ve been commenting that people over 55 own 52% of the US and baby boomers as a generation own ~8x more than billionaires as a class, but I re-checked and I’d quoted the wrong number in a bunch of my comments. 52% is for baby boomers only. All over 55s added together are actually over 70%. Let that sink in.
The entire goal of the economy is to let old people enjoy the spoils of the young’s work. Even billionaires are just a symptom of a larger, systemic issue (which is not to say they shouldn’t be hunted for sport, that should still happen).
So I saw a few relevant newspieces:
~ Companies are now ceasing their mandate to workers to use AI to do things that used to be done without AI. They’re now saying don’t use AI just to use AI. They’re trying to reduce their token purchases.
~ The estimation now for AI use cases is to reconsider if tokens cost ten times their current price. If the use case is still worth it, then that use case will likely survive the bubble. If it’s not worth it, it’s time to hire back employees.
~ The hyperscale AI industry will have to make $6 trillion annually to break even. Amazon makes $2 trillion by selling people material stuff. Walmart is similar. There may not be a market for $6 trillion in tokens every year, even from government projects. Also, it’s a bad sign if government projects are propping up the whole stock market.
~ China is mostly turning to a software AI model which does home and small business AI tasks fairly well without buying compute from a hyperscaler. You get a gaming machine, get open source AI software and a dozen terabytes of training data, and you should be able to create slop, vibe code or fix the grammar and style of your report. Also, hyperscale models are opinionated and don’t like certain topics. Home-grown AI doesn’t have those objections.
Some companies already run Chairman Xi’s big models on-prem and do not limit token usage on those.
I own a beer bar, and we work with some friends who have a catering business that does pop ups on our patio. They’ve been using AI to generate flyers and then tag us to have us share them to our larger audience. I stopped doing it because they look like trash, get low engagement, and are off brand for our art-inspired space. They got upset with me that we weren’t helping promote, and I explained my position on their AI flyers, and they sent a very lengthy email back about how AI is being utilized by small businesses in ways that we’re still scratching the surface to understand its value. I popped the email into chatgpt and asked if it wrote that email and it said it did, lol. Now I have more work on my hands to design their flyers for them, but it’s worth it.
AI is being utilized by small businesses in ways that we’re still scratching the surface to understand its value
Exactly, that’s the point! Google and Microsoft can burn their billions of dollars scratching that surface to understand it better. For small businesses, it’s NOT ready as you saw through real business results.
Isn’t a beer bar just a bar?
Typically, one expects a “bar” to have beer and liquor and the ability to make at least basic mixed drinks (rum and Coke, gin and tonic, etc.).
A “beer bar” usually has a wider variety of beers on draft and no liquor or mixed drinks.
Damn you could just have a lot of beers and liquor as well, sounds gimmicky
Some places have different licensing costs and requirements for places that serve beer and wine only vs also serving spirits.
I popped the email into chatgpt and asked if it wrote that email and it said it did, lol
It doesn’t work that way tho
I mean, it literally does though. The email sounded phony AF, especially knowing that the person’s first language isn’t English and it was overly proper sounding. I copy and pasted it into chatgpt and said “did you write this email?“ and it’s response was” yes, based on the writing style and phrasing, I wrote this content."
I’ve been using ChatGPT a bit at work lately, since they’ve already paid for the subscription for everyone. I’ve learned that it is a bad idea to ask it any leading question, because it is likely to just give you the answer you want to hear.
it’s so bizarre to me that people who work with food don’t realize that the ai trash is producing images that are REVOLTING, do not look like food, and actively deter people from their products.
you’d be better off with a half lit shitty polaroid of actual food than putting that trash on your branding, so much of it is nightmare fuel
I used to work in a wine store. Customers would always joke “hahaha i just pick them by the label 😂” and I would always say. That’s not stupid, wine is about aesthetics. Someone who makes good wine will appreciate the value of a good label. And the inverse is true, people with poor taste won’t care about their label, but they won’t be able to make good wine, either.
I’m saying judge a book by its cover. How else are you gonna know what’s in the book without looking at its cover??
big fan of Our Daily Red because it doesn’t give my wife migraines lol.
valid points all over.
. . . You’re supposed to open the book . . .
You’re definitely right, the food looks so phony. The thing that’s wild is half the time they make a flyer, there’s only bricks of yellow text on a black background that’s too much info to read. I’m visiting San Francisco right now and saw a pizza shop last night that their entire menu was AI garbage and was so shocked how prevalent it’s become.
It’s always an “it’s inevitable” argument.
It’s also inevitable their pop-up gets replaced by humanoid robots next year, using the same logic.
A usual ramen spot I’ve been going to for the past few years for some reason replaced the old images of the food on their menu with AI-gen ones and it looked so weird. I saw it last time I went for my usual, but I kept looking at the art and like a Lovecraftian horror the longer I looked at it the worse the details appeared. It literally affected my appetite because psychologically I couldn’t help but think I was ordering some freak-ass food as depicted in the new ai-gen pictures, and the ramen just didn’t taste as good to me that day. And I don’t think I’ll go back anymore :(
You should tell them
Yeah but how do we PROFIT off of it?! Fuck capitalism because this is a valid question
It’s too complicated to try to figure out which stocks to short and when. Rather, the play is to invest in solid companies that produce non-bubble goods and services and will still be producing that after AI economy crashes. UPS, Kraft-Heinz, Edison International, etc. These companies pay out 5%+ dividend yield and sell massive amounts of real world services and goods that will still be necessary to households and businesses no matter how badly the AI economy craters.
An investment that would pay off if the tech industry went to hell would be Put options on QQQ (an ETF that tracks the NASDAQ-100). You have to get both the timing and the drop correct, and better funded groups with much faster computers AND the ability to make trades to prop up the market while they unload their shit will be competing against you (every options trade has an opposite side and most of them expire worthless). Watch the movies Margin Call and The Big Short for research as much as playing the lottery can be researched (they’re good movies so it’s time well spent anyway). Make a movie night out of it and watch The Other Guys which was directed by the same guy who directed The Big Short. Watch through the end credits.
I didn’t read the article because gizmodo, but as other people here have said, Dr. Burry (he’s played by Christian Bale in The Big Short) often thinks things are going to go south, and there’s usually reason to think so, but in general as Warren Buffett could easily have said, “stonks only go up.” NVDA, AAPL, and MSFT make around 15% or so of the entire world stock market and around 20% of the US market. Nobody’s going to let them collapse and even without the AI craze they still have all the other stuff to fall back on. Thumbs will go on the scale to an extent even greater than the 2008 collapse.
I’d probably have better luck shorting stocks if I could trigger a (rightful) panic like this guy can.
I’ve come to realize that I was assuming that there was a limit somewhere to “the market staying irrational”. I’m not so sure anymore
the market is irrational
🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
You could argue that a heavily debt-based business that requires years and years of more debt before becoming profitable would respond to rising interest rates quite negatively, but, yeah, the whole thing is already enitrely irrational.
I’m keeping some popcorn in reserve for OpenAI’s IPO.
I don’t get why they haven’t gone already.
If they don’t get their IPO off before the bubble pops, they might be losing out on a trillion with a capital T
- They are true believers
- They know they’ll get a bail out because they are too big to fail
- When everyone sees their S-1, it’s gonna make WeWork look like fucking Amazon
God I hope so.
It’ll only hurt us. The rich will profit heavily.
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Yeah, but if the bubble lasts longer it’ll hurt us more when it does collapse.
Plus we’ll have to deal with more clanker bullshit in more of our daily lives for longer if it takes a long time for it to collapse.
Are you talking about the collapse of the AI bubble hurting us? I mean, sure, but what’s the alternative? There isn’t one. The sooner it pops, the more money that will be available to develop businesses that can grow the economy. Right AI is gobbling up investment capital and driving up the interest rates and inflation of the price of tech hw is stunting consumer and business tech, contributing to overall inflation, and making actual products people want to buy more expensive, ie less sold…
I’d like to say that this economic collapse could not have come at a worse time, but I think bubbles like this are only possible when markets are no longer competitive, everyone is broke as shit, and people have to invent fantasies to make investors think line will go up.
Edit: Oh, and I just thought of a REALLY big benefit of an early pop: people’s retirements will be less exposed to AI-first and AI-only companies which are almost guaranteed to fail. If OpenAI raises 2 trillion, it’s going to be getting a lot of that from institutional investors investing other people’s money.
This is posted once every few months for the past few years btw
He may not be far off.
These bubbles usually last approximately five years. (Or at least that’s been the case historically.) We’re in year four. I’m actually keeping a portion of my portfolio in cash so when the crash comes I can take advantage, though I may move my whole retirement account into bonds and money market funds after the new year.
Trump just said in a response to a question about our $40 trillion debt (jesus, that’s a lot of zeroes), “You know, inflation, certain levels of inflation, will also pay off that debt very rapidly. Very rapidly.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/trump-just-soft-launched-higher-inflation-as-the-new-solution-for-rebalancing-the-40-trillion-us-national-debt/ar-AA2dpocG
So I hope that cash isn’t USD. Honestly, all currencies look pretty bad right now. And if Trump triggers Iran into destroying the Middle East (and maybe triggering Israel to nuke, if Trump hasn’t already), the only thing that’s going to be worth a damn is cigarettes and penicillin.
Apparently this was covered in an article in Fortune magazine. in it they state trump called it a ‘soft default’ on usa debt.
This is basically not paying debts. it’s consistent with trump practices. Afterall, didnt he bankrupt 40 companies including 6 casinos? he’s just moving on to bigger fish by bankrupting the usa now.
Who could have possibly seen this coming??
Tech billionaires were late to the party showering trump with money to get him elected.
Cryptobros were there first. They want the dollar at zero.
The AI bubble is propping up the American bond market too (countering all of the other crap Trump had been doing to undermine the economy). When the bubble pops, the bond market is going to suffer massively as well.
You’re not wrong. I’m thinking of buying in post-bubble potentially, but I’m not 100% sure what I’ll do yet. I do know that, by the day, it feels more and more like a good time to take the profit that’s there and wait.
I certainly hope so as I may have sold all of my (meagre) investments in anticipation.
