/finance/ - Finance

Bribery or not, the American student loan system is predatory and needs to be castrated. The economy is fucked regardless and the absurdly high taxes americans are expected to pay are more than enough to keep the government afloat.
Maybe if they spent less money on Israili gibs or literally burning it in the desert they wouldn't need to fuck over young adults and patients.

>>158
>is that it's not just enough to know it; you also need to start building a portfolio, throwing yourself at people, and perhaps picking up certificates
In my experience, this is incredibly true. I'm certain all of my jobs in embedded development was due to my portfolio of independent projects with only a helping hand of my degree to get in the door. My classes never taught me much of embedded design, pcb design or much practical programming. All of those things I had to learn on my own. My employees were impressed I could even hold a soldering iron since it's not really taught anywhere. My GPA was also a little rough. Learning seemingly unrelated skills also helps. I never knew that fumbling around with a personal website to learn the basics of HTML and CSS, or messing with an old computer to make a home server would help in embedded, but it does. Learning programming has been a great skill for me, and I highly recommend picking it up, even if it's just to automate something boring in your life, like organizing data, moving files around, or have something like Excel not suck so much.

>>164
>My employees were impressed I could even hold a soldering iron
Lol, that's something even I can do, and I'm not doing embedded shit.

>>164
A soldering iron is a big hot pen. Its very obvious how to hold. But this is another example of the value of a skill being overlooked in HR. Is there even a way of putting such skills on your resume to get the actual hiring people (future bosses) to notice without getting mad at HR? Similarly when it comes to salary negotiations, HR does not give a shit about this and in my experience will attempt to undervalue you. The best thing I ever did was twist HRs arm to get more out of them and even then I still feel undervalued.

Would it be incredibly stupid to cash out my 401k with my employer to pay off my student loans? Currently have about $11k in it so I would get about $9k after taxes and fees/penalties for cashing out early. Currently have about $20k in student loans, which I could probably pay off within two years with my current employment status. Should I even be putting money in a 401k instead or prioritizing getting out of debt? My employer's plan is very generous (up to 10% matching which I am taking advantage of) but I'm not sure which one I should be focusing on.

I remember one of the Hayate movies had the idiot character involved in a highly leverage trade that lost her millions. I think she paid off the debt with an equally leveraged trade. Anyways, every dip is an opportunity for success and failure at the same time.

I'm thinking of buying out-of-the-money calls on VIXY, please talk me out of it, anon.
>is trading at only $17 despite market uncertainty
>historically has reached highs as far as $160 during similar bear markets (e.g. 2018)
>big number makes my penis feel big
There's also UVXY, which is a 1.5x leveraged version of VIXY, going for only $13.
Something about this feels stupid, IV is already at levels higher than they were during that 2018 crash, surely this can't work, and I hope some smart 'non can tell me why. **I'm still going to do it anyways.

>fucked up spoiler
Looking closer at .VIX and VIXY I'm even more confused. The .VIX was at 19.85 in early 2018, back when VIXY spiked to $160, but the .VIX is at 31.75, and VIXY is still trading low, even relative to other periods of high .VIX this same year. I'd wager it probably has to do with VIXY trading futures on .VIX rather than the .VIX directly, but why isn't have no idea why or what I'm doing.
Still, if understanding is right, these calls are dramatically underpriced, I'm looking at an [$18 10/28 Call] on UVXY that only needs a (by historical standards) small spike to start printing money, and it's only going for $75. I'm probably misunderstanding or ignoring something obvious that'll bite my ass later, but fuck, man, it beats buying scratch tickets.
Maybe predicting the timing of the catalyst for a .VIX spike is the biggest factor keeping prices on these options low? Again I'm hoping someone smarter than me on options is here and can call me out as a retard.

Christ I shouldn't write long posts at midnight, I wrote that like a ESL retard.

>>190
I'm not knowledgable at all about this but its interesting to read about. Good luck.

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>>71
It looks like the map only cares about USA and China, and China while still were a communist country, it was always an outlier, so I can imagine countries actually traded more with USA than China. Also note that the Chinese economy only really took off 20-30 years ago, while USA were mostly stable during this timeframe (image from kikepedia, so take it too with a grain of salt). An USA vs USSR in the 80s and USA vs China now comparison probably would make more sense.
But on the other hand, Romania is like the whitest country on the map, while they were the most (along with Yugoslavia) fuck Moscow, we're doing things our own way country in the bloc, so who knows.

>>72
>It looks like the map only cares about USA and China
I see, I guess ˝A map that shows if a given country traded more with the USA or the PRC in a given year˝ does not have the same ring to it. 
>An USA vs USSR in the 80s and USA vs China now comparison probably would make more sense.
It seems to be one of those things that are hard to cram on a map, even if you use a fancy interactive one, because to do it properly you would have to include a chart or list that shows all trade partners by percentage for every country, and that is overwhelming enough so that you really could not see the forest from the trees.

wire service he had used for years to pay vendors in Ukraine had suddenly stopped working.

He contacted AmEx for an explanation. A representative told him that the company had suspended service in the country. “I understand Russia, but why Ukraine?” Mr. Nayandin, who is based in Fairfax County, Va., said he told the AmEx rep.

Like many American companies, AmEx suspended operations in Russia and Belarus after Western governments bombarded the two countries with sanctions. But AmEx went a step further by shutting down a service in war-torn Ukraine that businesses use to make cross-border payments.

“In light of the war in Ukraine and the changing sanctions environment, which has made it difficult to provide a reliable customer experience, we have suspended a wire transfer service, FXIP, which is used by a small number of companies to make vendor payments to recipients in Ukraine,” an AmEx spokesperson said in a statement.

AmEx’s better-known card business remains fully functional in Ukraine, the spokesperson said.

Sprawling sanctions meant to cripple Russia’s financial system sometimes trip people and businesses out of their reach, even in Ukraine, the country they were meant to help.

Financial firms often take an overzealous approach to interpreting penalties due to the harsh penalties for violations. The potential extension of sanctions to new targets may also make companies cautious about who they do business with.

“From a business perspective, if the deal size is small, why take the risk? said Robert Clifton Burns, senior counsel at the law firm Crowell & Moring LLP.

>>79
I cannot find anything about how this FXIP thing works from a technical perspective, but what makes international wire-transfers somehow complicated is that the national banking systems are not directly connected (hence SWIFT and everything else discussed ITT). The usual solution is that a bank opens an account at a foreign bank, and use that as an ˝access point˝ to the banking system of that country. I suspect AmEx also has at least one bank account in every country where it's available, in order to deal with card payments, and this system piggybacks on that. So instead of using the normal method of sending funds from a bank account in one country to a foreign bank account, they credit the sender's money on the AmEx bank account in the sender's country, and then the once receiving the funds gets them from the AmEx bank account in his country. 

In short, it really has nothing to do with the technological side of things, instead they simply decided that they won't use their Ukrainian bank account to send money to individuals and businesses.

>>101 (OP) 
I think he wanted to shitpost like usual, but then he (or some sort of assistant or manager or whatever) thought that this might somehow or an other get him into trouble. Musk is a good investor, and by that I mean he is good at convincing others to throw money at various things, but he also seems to be a shitposter at heart. It's best to just ignore him, except if you really do have too much money.

>>105
>Musk is a good investor
Musk is a good conman.

>>105
>Musk is a good investor, and by that I mean he is good at convincing others to throw money at various things,
>>108
>Musk is a good conman.
Conmen are good investors, exactly because they are good conmen. The world is such a horrible place in no small part because we have too many people who only want to see numbers go up, and they will throw money at anything that promises a good enough return of investment.

>>90 (OP) 
I don't know the details, but I somehow doubt that mormons were secretly amassing these very specific products for years, so that they can suddenly release them on the market to bring  down the price. Do they have some sort of a closed economy of their own that can serve tens of millions of people, and yet they just don't use all of that capacity to sell to the general market? Because that sounds implausible to me.

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>>91
>Do they have some sort of a closed economy of their own that can serve tens of millions of people, and yet they just don't use all of that capacity to sell to the general market?
Yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow6mnAowINw

>>92
Sounds like most of that stuff is already tied up for existing programs. The ˝best˝ they could do is to reroute what is meant for global disaster relief, but methinks they wouldn't do that over this comparatively small issue.

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>>25
>>25
>Although maybe you could go even more retrofuturistic and embed a tiny amount of precious metals in the coins.
I have seen something like that in banknotes on Zerohedge
Found it https://goldback.com/
Pretty damn aesthetic.

>>23
Actually if I recall correctly they have to use Pokèmon tokens because no minting agency in either Europe or Russia wants to associate themselves with an unrecognized country.

>>26
There is an other company that makes the goldbacks themselves, and its core this is just gold leaf between two layers of polymer:
https://valaurum.com/
I kind of like the idea, but the execution is not so good. Ideally these gold notes should have the size and form of a credit card, so that you can stack them in those fancy modern valets that only hold cards. And if you think about it, you could also shape solid gold into that form, and then also clad it in polymer. 

I can imagine an economy where you have digital fiat currency and these gold notes of various weights existing as competing currencies, with the former being preferred. Accepting the digital currency would be mandatory for every business, but they are also allowed to accept these gold notes instead. although they can also refuse the latter. Also, back in the 19th century you could show up at a mint with some gold or silver, and they'd give you coins for them. The amount of precious metals in those coins was less than what you gave to the mint, and that was the payment. I can imagine the exact same system would work with these gold notes. Gresham's law would most likely turn this whole thing into a hobby for the most part, as 99% of people would use the digital money for more than 99% of their transactions, but at least those die hard fans of gold w

>>26
https://invidious.flokinet.to/watch?v=R7TPLv1wviE
https://invidious.flokinet.to/watch?v=TeFXrh6DEMY
This is some quality 'murican 'tism.

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>>18 (OP) 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Certificate_(United_States)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_certificate_(United_States)
I have to agree with you OP, these gold and silver certificates are kind of nice, and they are also interesting.

>>34 (OP) 
Is it a small mom'n'pop hole of a shop, or a decently sized one at a frequented place? And is it physical only, or do you do online too?

>>42
Small, and physical shop

>>6 (OP) 
https://anonfiles.com/34UbO3M6xc/Donald_J._Trump_Tony_Schwartz_-_Trump_The_Art_of_the_Deal_2004_Ballantine_Books_pdf

>>6 (OP) 
Got any good books on the farming / construction industry and how to manage economies in one?