181–190 of 263 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Deficits are mostly attributable to military spending. Post-WWII federal deficits are mostly attributable to declining total effective income tax rates.
Source? The first couple of graphs here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State... , suggest otherwise. We've rarely had income taxes as a higher percentage of GDP than we do now.
My countries economy is very closely tied to Chinas. I wonder what a Chinese financial crisis would look like here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
and there will need to be a reckoning And yet when I read things like this I also think of the cliché, "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." People have been waiting decades for Japan's post-boom day of reckoning and we've not seen it.
> People have been waiting decades for Japan's post-boom day of reckoning and we've not seen it. Japan's "day of reckoning" already came: what they've been in for the last 25+ years is the "post-reckoning" of ZIRP, low growth and low inflation. If the Chinese debt bubble explodes, it's not like the country is going to collapse, the most common prediction is that they'll become "Japan 2.0" where the country is functio…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There was a stock broker looking for new business. He cold called 512 people (he must have been a quant); half he told to sell X stock, half he told to buy. The next week he called the 256 for whom he'd made the right prediction and did the same again: Half he told to sell, half to buy ... several weeks later he was down to 16 people. He called all of them and said, 'look, I was right 5 times in a row ...'. Except,…
It sounds more like a parable, not an actual story. The point is that if enough people make prediction, some of them will right over and over and over - even though it's all random.
Ha, that's a great observation; I hadn't thought of it. On one hand, I'm very uncomfortable with any implied comparison to the most well known practitioner of parables. On the other, many others have used the form. Maybe I'll write all my HN posts in parable form - 'those who have ears to hear' will understand; the others I won't have to deal with. I could use it for business emails too.
Coming up with that many parables might be challenging.
I think the best model to understand this is Michael Pettis's balance sheet analysis. He covers it extensively, but here's his latest digest of the model: http://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/66221 It really makes clear how stark the choices are for China. The debt binge of the last ~10 years has masked the flattening out of productive investment, and there will need to be a reckoning. Hopefully it's a…
It seems like smart people have been predicting that China's growth is unsustainable on a regular basis for at least 15 years... it's tough for an average HNer like myself to take the time to tell which "expert" is just blowing smoke and which expert truly has a handle on the salient facts- Guess all I can really do is simply wait and see who ends up being right...
When the collapse will happen, people will be outraged and will pretend like in Greece that they were betrayed by their politicians, lied to. But this accumulation of debt happens in plain sight, it is just that no one seems to care.
Hard to predict the timig, like it is hard to predict the timing of a market crash. I have heard people calling the end of the current economic cycle for the past 5 years. Some say Trump has delayed a correction that should have happened this year by 2-3 years (if his economic package goes through). Well it's the same with the accumulation of debt. You can live on the credit card as long as your creditors are not concerned about your credit. At one point the sentiment turns and your credit lines get cut. Then it is the end. Greece is there. Italy is close. France and Japan a little further. The US will get there eventually.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like smart people have been predicting that China's growth is unsustainable on a regular basis for at least 15 years... it's tough for an average HNer like myself to take the time to tell which "expert" is just blowing smoke and which expert truly has a handle on the salient facts- Guess all I can really do is simply wait and see who ends up being right...
It's funny because these massive debt accumulations invariably end up either in financial collapses or period of very high inflation, both of which can have dramatic impacts on a large part of the population (particularly savers and pensioners). But they are the most predictable thing in the world. Yet no one seems to be worried about them, whether in Europe or in the US. When the collapse will happen, people will be…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_housing_bubble
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds more like a parable, not an actual story. The point is that if enough people make prediction, some of them will right over and over and over - even though it's all random.
> a parable Ha, that's a great observation; I hadn't thought of it. On one hand, I'm very uncomfortable with any implied comparison to the most well known practitioner of parables. On the other, many others have used the form. Maybe I'll write all my HN posts in parable form - 'those who have ears to hear' will understand; the others I won't have to deal with. I could use it for business emails too. Coming up with th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luckily, they also control the government and military.
The citizens elect the government, so I have to take issue with this point. Wealthy people do have quite a bit of influence though. Basically what I'm saying is, we can elect a government that serves our own interest if we cared to. If it does get ugly, and the government/military turns on its citizens then the US as we know it will be dead or on life support. Probably, in such a scenario, people won't go quietly int…
Not to also mention that government's and militaries need people to supply it, and if their suppliers are now on the list of enemy combatants then such governments and militaries won't have the same leverage/power as those that are not combating it suppliers.