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The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

lynalden.com

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Re: The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

#61

Post by cactus2093 »

vinniejames wrote: post #30
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #12

"Instead of drawing down our gold reserves, however, we gradually draw down our domestic manufacturing base and it gets replaced piece-by-piece in foreign countries." To me, this is the money shot. I hadn't seen this expressed before and it makes perfect sense. I'm baffled that we (the US) caused this to happen to the US. I'm (unhappily) registered Republican but I argued vociferously to a Dem friend in 2000 that our…

This is 100%, the fact the US can barely manufacturer face masks during a global pandemic is embarrassing. On the other end, how do you compete with slave labor in the Chinese factories?

This is somewhere near the very bottom of a ranked list of US problems in this pandemic. Manufacturing takes time to significantly ramp up regardless of where it is, it’s not clear there would have been a major difference between what we did in waiting until we could buy more masks overseas vs waiting for US production to ramp up. And we had supposedly already alleviated this problem anyway with national stockpiles, except that those had not been maintained. Fixing that mistake is much easier and probably even more effective than undoing the globalization of the past few decades.

And honestly, by about April this year when China started having the virus under control and reopened their manufacturing sector at full capacity, it’s a good thing they were equipped to manufacture so many essential items. The US started running into capacity problems with some of the industries we do have like meat processing plants, if we relied more heavily on domestic manufacturing we actually would have been worse off over that period.

Re: The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

#62

Post by RobertoG »

etothepii wrote: post #27

"From there, paper currency and credit was added as a more convenient layer onto gold." It's not a universally accepted opinion but I take Martin Felix's view, articulated in "Money," that credit predates coinage. It's turned me off the article and as a consequence I can't read any more.

The article is wrong about that but not about other things. Overall is an interesting reading.

It's also interesting to see how step by step some myths are disappearing. For instance, the article recognize the importance of taxes as a main drive of giving value to a fiat currency.

Re: The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

#63

Post by [deleted] »

QUFB wrote: post #44
lawrenceyan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clear that the account was either sold or taken over. Look at the most recent comments as well; not even a single one since 2012. I know we aren't supposed to talk about this per HN guidelines, but this is just too blatant. And yes, I've already emailed hn@ycombinator.com.

What about this interesting submission makes it "clear" the account was "sold"?

[deleted]

Re: The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

#64

Post by u801e »

justinzollars wrote: post #47
vsskanth wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how do you compete with slave labor in the Chinese factories? Trading blocs that ensure minimum working conditions. Companies which pay the worker a decent wage should get favorable tax treatment and procurement.

Or technological improvements

Some industries in China follow the 996[1] working hour system.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

Re: The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

#65

Post by CuriouslyC »

ikiris wrote: post #57
CuriouslyC wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflating the dollar is probably the only way we're going to get out of the hole we're in, so that'd kill two bird with one stone.

Suicide is an solution, but it's not a very recommended one.

Neither is keeping a patient on life support when they're persistently vegetative and you need the hospital bed.

If you have a non-austerity solution that doesn't assume infinite exponential economic expansion I'm all ears.

Re: The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

#66

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

jboydyhacker wrote: post #31

Economists writing about the end of the dollar as a reserve currency is not a new thing. With the Fed printing money tho at record rates this would be the time for a shift to happen. The problem is there is no alternative. The Euro has it's own structural issues and as we saw in March when folks got scared they sold alternatives like Bitcoin down hard. In short, there is no alternative without international cooperati…

Bitcoin broke all time high a few weeks ago. :)

Rats leaving the sinking ship that is the US dollar and all fiat currency seems to be happening very quickly. I hear almost everyone talking about it now, it isn't the loonies anymore. Money that isn't tied to whatever stupid policies your government has implemented will always be attractive. No one asked me if I wanted to prop up the stock market by printing ~25% of all US dollars that have ever been printed, in 2020.

https://digitalik.net/btc/

Re: The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

#67

Post by namdnay »

lettergram wrote: post #49
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #12

"Instead of drawing down our gold reserves, however, we gradually draw down our domestic manufacturing base and it gets replaced piece-by-piece in foreign countries." To me, this is the money shot. I hadn't seen this expressed before and it makes perfect sense. I'm baffled that we (the US) caused this to happen to the US. I'm (unhappily) registered Republican but I argued vociferously to a Dem friend in 2000 that our…

My father was one of the last tool makers in the US working for Molex. They spent years teaching the Chinese, the Chinese would disassemble all molds sent over to China and often break them, so my fathers team would have to fix / rebuild them. They spent years training the Chinese side-by-side in the US. In the end they still haven’t exactly caught up to the quality we had in the US. However, they now have 5x the too…

Without a very strong (and therefore expensive) social security net, “Letting people work for whatever wage they can achieve” is slavery. See 19th century Britain

Germany still has a strong industrial base, without a race to the bottom and with strong unions. So it is possible :)

Re: The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

#68

Post by dehrmann »

FpUser wrote: post #45
jboydyhacker wrote: post #31

Economists writing about the end of the dollar as a reserve currency is not a new thing. With the Fed printing money tho at record rates this would be the time for a shift to happen. The problem is there is no alternative. The Euro has it's own structural issues and as we saw in March when folks got scared they sold alternatives like Bitcoin down hard. In short, there is no alternative without international cooperati…

Everything we produce can be measured in / has energy cost. So maybe some kind of energy units should be the universal currency.

For goods, it's more like money represents a debt of human labor. You can use that labor to drill for oil, design a robot, or sew a garment.

Re: The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

#69

Post by recursivedoubts »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #12

"Instead of drawing down our gold reserves, however, we gradually draw down our domestic manufacturing base and it gets replaced piece-by-piece in foreign countries." To me, this is the money shot. I hadn't seen this expressed before and it makes perfect sense. I'm baffled that we (the US) caused this to happen to the US. I'm (unhappily) registered Republican but I argued vociferously to a Dem friend in 2000 that our…

There was a recent youtube of a Chinese professor discussing how china has gotten along so well with the US while the great migration of manufacturing occurred. It boiled down to wall street being fine with moving manufacturing abroad, as they don't identify with, and in fact despise, the American working class.

Pretty depressing.

Re: The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

#70

Post by kqr2 »

silexia wrote: post #5

Lyn Alden has become my favorite macroeconomist through the Covid crisis. I bought a bunch of puts in February 2020, they went way up in March till the Fed stepped in and then went down. I went looking for answers on how to understand macroeconomics and Alden has had a lot of interesting takes on it.

If so, assets such as global equities, quality residential real estate, precious metals, industrial commodities, and alternatives such as Bitcoin, are likely to do well.

Do you plan on shifting your investment strategy?

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