It would seem to be the future...

Thank you. And yes, I agree with you.

Your points are excellent. What many people don't recognize is how much wealth transfer from the Middle Class to the elites has actually happened due to QE and Federal Reserve intervention, especially through the manipulation of inflation. It's a vicious dual-prong attack on wealth. It's worthless to put your money in a bank or in bonds because it doesn't even retain its value due to interest rates, yet the Fed's target of 2% inflation every year devalues even the money people do keep (and is the only way they can finance the outrageous government debt). What we really need are interest rates between 5%-8% and 0 inflation. That's what spurs investment and real growth. Our economy has been living on borrowed time - literally - with these artificially low interest rates. There will be a major correction at some point and just like shifting tectonic plates, it will either be in a series of smaller shifts that shake things up, or a massive shift that destroys everything. The Fed has been trying to prevent any kind of shift in an effort to enrich themselves for as long as possible while they hope they can sell everything just before the meltdown.

That may be the answer to the question.

Maybe residents of other countries have been buying long-term U.S. bonds because they believe the Fed will buy the bonds from them later at a higher price (pushing their yields down, possibly into negative territory).

It's really hard to know now because the markets have become permanently distorted as a result of QE.

But, for whatever reason, investors are currently afraid that the Fed is going to just let rates go higher and will do nothing about it.

So they are selling their bonds...and this is causing car loans to become more expensive....which is causing auto-sales to decline.

I just wanted to point this out....because it seems like it has been absent from the discussion.

Well said.

But I have also read things indicating that the Fed never intends to bring rates back up, but instead wants to force negative interest rates as has happened in nations like Cyprus.

So in a couple years there will be a glut of used cars overpriced by finance companies or trashed by former buyers before they were repo'd.

In order to understand why new car sales are declining, you have to understand where the money comes from to pay for them.

New cars are generally bought on credit, using a loan from a bank. But the interest-rates on long-term bank loans are derived from the yield on long-term U.S. Treasuries.

So if the yield on Treasuries goes up, the interest-rate on car loans goes up. As a result, the demand for car loans declines. But since most buyers of cars only buy with loans, a decline in loan demand results in a decline in car demand.

In this case, yields on long-term bonds have gone up recently because of a belief that President Trump's policies will lead to inflation. No one wants to loan money to the government (or to anyone else) if they believe they're going to be paid back in depreciated currency.

So the real question we should be asking ourselves is not "why are car sales declining?" but rather "why were car sales so high for so long?"

If the market is correct in thinking that inflation is coming, it means that past car buyers got a sweet deal. They were able to borrow dollars when dollars were expensive and pay them back when dollars are cheap. So why did anyone loan them money?

And why did so many foreigners buy U.S. bonds at high prices all of these years and push interest-rates down when it was obvious that the U.S. government was on a fiscally unsustainable path and would eventually have to devalue the dollar?

That's the real question everyone should be asking.

Let me see if I can get it "from the horse's mouth" so to speak.

I'd like to hear more about Intel's ownership of AMD, please.

AMD was effectively purchased by Intel, so it's really nVidia vs Intel. And GPU's are not just for gaming. Most hard-core processing power now focuses on the computation of floating-point numbers - very large numbers with long decimals. GPU's are specifically built to efficiently process floating point number calculations. What most people don't know is that in a multi-core processor - only one core is a CPU and all the rest are GPU's. The CPU does the overhead/control work while the GPU's do the heavy lifting.

Samsung an Motorola would also like to be competitors in the GPU market, but they're pretty far behind either nVidia or Intel simply from an R&D budget standpoint.

The way my cousin always compares Intel vs AMD is to say that AMD has a faster raw processor for mathematics, but Intel's is a better multi-purpose chip. With nVidia vs AMD/Intel, AMD/Intel is a generation behind nVidia in power usage development, which is why their processors run hotter.

The price of Trucks has exploded ..60K for a truck ! ....nope not happening...

Thanks for the links. I need to get off my butt and browse eBay more. It has been busy lately and I have been doing workish stuff at work!

Jan
(But getting a new laptop is ultimately 'work'.)

I have used both and not run into that particular issue, I did have an NVIDIA driver update trash my Win7 to the point it was DOA.

That is a viable alternative, which is in progress in several places. You do hit a brick wall where the tools of today will not handle the size, and yet to buy tools that do, is so expensive, it becomes not cost effective, so they are wandering around looking for the golden goose egg... All manufacturers are in that boat...

Yes, Intels development process is full of bloat and inefficiency, and some really wild management style. They cut the headcounts in the factory to "save money" and we get to where we do not have enough people to do all the things they demand. Leads to some very interesting "confrontations". They go hung up in the ""kill sem all" management system where getting rid of 15 or 20% is sooooo efficient, yet they did not have the temerity to actually analyze the structure and say "this makes no sense". So now we have lots more "no sense" and less "real work".....

I understand there is a competition in gpus for gaming primarily, blarman. Are you referring to AMD vs Nvidia?
In my experience AMD has a driver problem that they have not fixed in 7 years according to internet discussions. The symptom is that windows lose their size and position when the lcd monitor power is cut off and back on, switches to low power idle mode, or signal source is changed on the monitor. Nvidia has no such problem. If a company can't fix a problem like this with one monitor connected to a windows OS computer (W7, W8, W10 all have the same issue) then they don't deserve my business.
AMD's gpu products are the same price/performance level as Nvidia but use significantly more power to get results compared to Nvidia. imo, it appears that AMD trails the leader in gpus as well as cpus.
Is there another competitor in the gpu competition?

The real competition now is in GPU's - not CPU's. My cousin used to work for Intel and now works for nVidia and he said that they really can't go smaller, so they've either got to go to 3D chips (a scientist recently figured out how to stack transistor gates) or move to optronics (light-based circuitry). Optronics will eventually win out because there is no heat/loss, but they're still trying to get viable chips built.

I bought a topped out Ford F150 4X4 back in 2011, with luxury everything for around $50K. If I tried to buy a similar truck with the same options, it comes out to around $70K. A base truck with 4WD and no options goes for at least $45-50K.

Perhaps Bloomberg should examine the consequences of a) Cash for Clunkers, b) Obama buying out the car parts market as part of Cash for Clunkers, and c) GM and Chrysler becoming Government Motors. Let GM moan when their Venezuelan plant gets "nationalized". Awwww, too bad.

And record profits if you believe the news. Intel still has the edge on the competition, but my guess is that the next breakthrough will come from an individual in a small company.

Indeed, Intel is now scraping the bottom of the performance/cost barrel, as each process improvement is more expensive, longer to get working and more prone to low yields for longer time. Hence their new tick, tock, tock tock process.

Find a 2004-7 Dodge with the Cummings that was taken care of, it will go forever, mine just tends to eat brake rotors with no warning every 60K....but you get wise to that after the first time...

Good policy. I have a Dodge 3500 2004 dually with 176K miles on it. I have taken care of it and it has never gone down on me. The Cummings 6 cylinder is an awesome engine for power, relative efficiency (18mpg). While waiting for my Elio, I junked my Ford Fiesta, as they really had me pissed off, and Hyundai offered 60K bumper to bumper, and 100K power train in the purchase. My Elantra is twice as big as the crappy Fiesta and gets 40 mpg. It was only 14K vs 18 for the Fiesta, so I am happy.

This is why there is a new startup called Elio. I have made a reservation a couple years ago, the car was listed for 6800, they took 1500 for the reservation and added 1500 credit, so I have a cost of 3800.00. It is designed to get 83 mpg, has 3 wheels and the base cost is up to 7300 now, but I expected some rise, as they were working from their design only. They also say they will allow you to pay with a credit card that pays for gas and then sends the same amount to them every time you fill up. I dove in because it is what I need, I drive alone, 62 miles each way, the car seats 2 front to back, so it is half as wide as a regular car. It fills the niche of an inexpensive commuter, with no luxury but what is basic for today.
I just saw an article by Graham Summers that claims the next market crash will be driven by the sub prime auto lending programs, that have gone overboard on poor credit risks and is now causing the market to nose over, as it has saturated the market. There are not enough qualified buyers for the sales they need to feed the wall street thirst for constant profit increases, so they did the next best thing, loan to anyone who is living and breathing, job optional. Just like the mortgage market did. He is forecasting any time now a big implosion of the debt and securities markets which will trash stocks.

We don't buy cars often Our last purchase was 12 years ago..We bought a '16 Ford Taurus In November. It was the last Taurus they had and it had the packages we wanted.It was obvious the dealer wanted to get rid of it, but the price was a little on the high side. (about $5K too high.) After a bit of haggling the price got lower every time we started to walk. Long story short, we wound up about within $1,500 of our price. Well, throw in that we liked the salesman, the head of the service dep't., and the dealership was 5 minutes from our house it was a sale.The car already contained two "packages."