*1969, degrees in business administration and more recently in psychology, 20 years work in hospital management, currently teaching/tutoring statistics
arunto
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...with the Baltic states being analogous to Czechoslovakia (which was allies with France, but which was more or less abandoned to Hitler)
I think a key difference is the presence of NATO troops in the Baltic states (NATO Enhanced Forward Presence, Baltic Air Policing). Militarily, those are only a tripwire, but killing US pilots in an attack on the Baltic states seems to me a very dangerous move.
If France and England had had garrisons in Czechoslovakia, then 1938 could have played out quite differently.
I don’t expect another military attack against a neigbouring country of Russia soon—it takes some time to consolidate power after an invasion (if that really is Russia’s objective).
What I do think likely is international treaties between Russia and some non-NATO former Sowjet republics giving Russia additional rights, maybe military bases, etc. Because Russia’s “bargaining position” towards its neigbours should have increased considerably.
I think it could have indirect effects on you and people you know personally because of sanctions against Russia and Russia’s countermoves against those sanctions. That are the key informations to watch the next days and weeks.
The three perspectives map to some extent on to the political discussion in Germany. Currently there is a debate whether there should be a general vaccination mandate (there is already a mandate for health care workers). The parlament will not decide along party lines (which is quite atypical for the German political system), currently there are three possible bills:
a) A general vaccination mandate (18+ years), the reasoning behind that look somewhat like “Zero COVID” (but maybe it’s a combination of “Zero COVID” and “Flatten the Curve”).
b) A vaccination mandate for older citizens (50+ years) because those groups are primarily at risk and a high number of infections there puts too much stress on the healthcare systems (leading to capacity restraints for other urgent treatments, e.g. cancer surgery), “Flatten the Curve”.
c) The rejection of a general vaccination mandate because everybody has the possibility of protecting themselves by vaccination, “Focused Protection”.
One possible component e.g. drug overdose deaths, with an increase of 31% from 2019 to 2020 (it will be interesting to see, how the numbers for 2021 are). CDC
Great list, thanks.
I think for 7. there is a possible alternative:
Writing something like “In the case that you would be willing to answer my questions I have included them below this mail” and putting them in at the end of the mail (below the closing of the e-mail).
This could have advantages for both sides:
The recipient can, if they choose, have a short look at the questions and decide based on that whether they want to answer. They don’t run the risk of saying “yes” and then being confronted with a time investment they didn’t want to make once they read the questions in a second mail.
Maybe the questions are interesting for the recipient (increasing the likelihood of them answering).
If the questions are easy to answer and the mail reaches the recipient at a time when he is able and willing to answer them it is not necessary for them to answer the mail and then wait for the questions.
In general, I agree with your view that one should try not to get Covid (Unless the individual costs for trying not to get it are very high, which would depend on the individual life circumstances. Since here in Germany many things are closed down anyway, for me the costs are smaller than the benefit of playing ist safe). Having said that, short remarks about two of your points:
G. Here it is interesting to look at different countries. For me the default in the tool was UK and Germany, and the differences in excess mortality for the age group 15-64 were huge. I am not sure whether that can only be explained by different Covid rates in different countries.
Q. On a short time-scale one important factor could be how long ago you were boostered (assuming you have got 3 vaccinations). With a booster very recently (maybe a couple of weeks) it could be better to be infected now than in 3 months. (I still think it would be even better not be infected now or in 3 months, but depending on the individual costs of not getting infected the timing of the booster could be a relevant factor for some people).
Based on a study by the University Mainz (Germany) it seems to me that long Covid is real, but not necessarily if you look at the specific symptoms thought to be associated with long covid.
They compared three groups:
Group 1 Covid patients (“wissentlich infizierte”)
Group 2 persons with Covid antibodies not knowing that they had Covid (“unwissentlich infizierte”)
Group 3 persons without Covid antibodies (“ohne Infektion”)a) Looking at a list of possible long Covid symptoms 59.5% of group 1 were asymptomatic, 60.4% of group 2 and 54.3% of group 3. Serious long Covid symptoms 7.3% in group 1, 9.3% in group 2 and 11.3% in group 3. [slides 18 and 21]. Taking this at face value would indicate a small protective effect for getting Covid symptoms against long Covid (not the official conclusions of that study, of course, and mine neither, but it would have been such an amusing headline).
b) Looking at the subjective health state, however, yielded more plausible results:
29.8% of group 1 (knowingly infected) reported worse health compared to before the pandemic, whereas 22.4% of group 2 (unknowingly infected) and 22.0% of group 3 (not infected) [see slide 13]. Maybe the difference between group 1 and groups 2+3 could be seen as a rough estimate for long Covid (my conclusion, not necessarily the study’s), that would put the risk for long Covid at about 7.5%. Of course, there are factors that could lead to this estimate being too low (having had Covid reducing the anxiety related health problems compared to the other groups; then the organ based health problems for group 1 could be more frequent than 7.5% to get to the same overall results) or too high (persons who know they had Covid think they should say that their health is worse, e.g. because of the discussion about long Covid.).
As for the second risk (that your public claims become part of your identity), even pseudonymous blogging could be a problem if you have a certain number of followers. To guard against this to some degree, the advice might be:
”You should try blogging under different pseudonyms” (maybe on different platforms when it is, understandably, discouraged to do so on one platform.)
Am curious, are you suggesting any actionable trading strategy?
No, primarily I wanted to point out certain risk factors. The last sentence of my post was meant primarily as an illustration of the sentence before that.
d) sounds like you might be suggesting long vol, are you suggesting that?
Based on the risk factors stated above (but also based on the fact that overvaluations can be quite long lasting) I think most likely is one of two scenarios: A continued increase in the stock market based on the feeling of “there is no alternative” or a marked reduction of equity prices, so basically a bimodal distribution of expected returns.
Whether this is already priced in in the current option market I don’t know. (And since I don’t do short term trading I don’t really care that much.) Without a specific prediction for the distribution of the expected returns (which I am unable to give above the more qualitative statement in the previous paragraph) I think it isn’t possible to answer that.
Thank you very much, now I have realized the problem.
For some reason I had activated the option “Restore the previous WYSIWYG editor”. After unselecting that I can paste pictures into the editor (but I don’t have to because the current editors automatically used the best size for the pictures).
Which decades are you looking at? As recently as the decade before last (2000s) we had negative real (and nominal) returns for 10 years.
Sorry, I should have made that more clear. I am talking about the period since the start of the interest rate decline (mid 1980s to today).
“c) The change in the interest rate environment and the inexperience of the vast majority of players with such a change can lead to price movements that go far beyond usual price movements in the business cycle.”
I’m not sure this sentence makes sense?
Let me try to rephrase that: I think we will be seeing a fundamental change in the financial markets due to an end to the 35year long reduction of real interest rates. And most of the actors have only known investing in an environment with more or less constantly decreasing real interest rates. I believe this combination could lead to widespread panic in the markets once the people making investment decision realize that they don’t know anymore how the markets react due to the new environment.
Therefore we should expect forward returns to be low. The problem (for me) is there isn’t much to be done about this. TINA. There is no alternative.
I believe that rationale for investing in equities is quite widespread today. Obviously, there is an alternative (accepting secure negative real returns), but in order to avert guaranteed losses investors take on risk. I am not saying that this is necessarily the wrong strategy, but it poses an interesting question: How will investors with this motivation for holding stocks react in a downturn?
The bond yields in your second figure are obviously not adjusted for inflation (ie, they are nominal yields, not real yields after inflation). So I’m not sure one can draw much of a conclusion from it.
That’s true, I should have used a chart with real interest rates (I chose that specific graph because it was the one that made the problem salient for me when I had first seen it).
However, with real interest rates it looks similar:
Thanks. Resizing the image isn’t a problem but how can I upload the resized image? If I click on the image icon in the editor I have to put in an URL.
(I know the charts are too small but I haven’t figured out yet how to adjust the size of the charts in the editor).
Two ominous charts on the financial markets
When it comes to China a crucial question is how much more contagious Omicron is in a naive population (i.e. how much of Omicron’s tramsmission advantage is not explained by its potential for breakthrough infections.) Do we have good estimates for that?
That depends on the outcome measure. For self reported health I think that is quite possible.
However, for all cause mortality (as in the paper) as an outcome measure I don’t think a nocebo effect to be likely.
I mean, we can. Drop a bunch of humans naked in a forest today and they won’t be able to replicate most of our inventions for centuries.
That’s actually an interesting question. How much does it count, in practice, that we know that something is possible, even if we don’t know the specific details? (And, of course, it would depend on the forest and its climate—how much energy is needed for how long for the mere survival and how much energy and time can be spend on replicating inventions).
The setting up of the SU in 1922 did not include the Baltic states—these were independent states from 1918 until 1940 (and I don’t think that in Monday’s speech Putin contradicted that).
Parties to the Treaty on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922 were only:
- Russian SFSR
- Ukrainian SSR
- Byelorussian SSR
- Transcaucasian SFSR