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Global real interest rates and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018 (2020)

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Re: Global real interest rates and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018 (2020)

#111

Post by danmaz74 »

peteretep wrote: post #47
kristopolous wrote: post #13

This isn't surprising. Risk and rates are related and there's been an increase in stability and decrease in risk throughout the centuries. As far as a stable society goes, low interest rates are a good sign Even amidst this terrible pandemic, no country has collapsed, nobody has gone to war, currencies haven't been debased, all protests have more or less been handled, nothing is truly out of control. Mass death and f…

> Mass death Covid has killed a lot of people and created a lot of heart-break, and it would be heartless to try and minimise that or to view it in purely economic times in this moment. However, I think that in 100 years, future historians will describe the effect of the deaths itself as being pretty negligable: maybe 10% over the expected rate without Covid in 2020 and 2021, maybe 5m people in each year total, again…

The goal of all these lockdown measures is exactly to limit the number of additional deaths.

Re: Global real interest rates and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018 (2020)

#112

Post by casualrandomcom »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #4
panax wrote: post #2

"since the major monetary upheavals of the late middle ages, a trend decline between 0.6–1.6 basis points per annum has prevailed" " Against their long‑term context, currently depressed sovereign real rates are in fact converging ‘back to historical trend’ — a trend that makes narratives about a ‘secular stagnation’ environment entirely misleading, and suggests that — irrespective of particular monetary and fiscal re…

Extrapolating a trend (even a 700 year long one) into the indefinite future is a fraught exercise, as is attempting to read it as benign just because it has perhaps been so in the past. Remind me, who was it that wrote about the tendency of the rate of the profit to fall over the long term, until the point it provokes a crisis?

That one actually predicted the First World War.

I am actually with you on the first sentence but your counterexample is weak at best

Re: Global real interest rates and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018 (2020)

#113

Post by h0l0cube »

strken wrote: post #89
steveBK123 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I’m not sure exactly how you meant it, so I won’t direct this at you, just generally... I can’t get over the techbro straw man of the “lockdown” I’ve seen thrown around a lot. First, compared to most of Asia that actually got this virus under control, we have never really had much of a true lockdown here. Second, it’s not the lockdown, its the pandemic. In most areas economic activity dropped off well before an…

Can't speak to the US lockdown, but Melbourne, Victoria, Australia had restrictive lockdowns (1 hour outdoor exercise with up to 2 people together, 1 daily trip to the supermarket per household, couldn't travel more than 5km from your house, police roadblocks out of the city and out of the state, non-essential industries shut down and some essential ones operating at significantly reduced capacity, 8pm-5am curfew) an…

> was accompanied by a 22% spike in calls to the largest suicide hotline

A counterfactual: how many people would be affected if their spouse/parent died without the lockdown? These tragedies are unfolding in many countries, and by this misfortune we'll be able to see, in retrospect, the impact of government interventions vs outcomes in a pandemic.

Re: Global real interest rates and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018 (2020)

#114

Post by orasis »

hanniabu wrote: post #91
throw0101a wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You list assets, which have generally always gone up in value over time. Inflation, i.e. CPI, is (roughly) about cost of living through a basket of goods: * https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/01/inflation-truthers/ * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25644580 If you don't believe the government-published CPI you can confirm their work, as others have done: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_proj…

> Crypto is a Ponzi scheme. I've never heard anybody educated on the matter make this statement. It's always from someone that doesn't understand it and therefore thinks it's a scam.

There is no crypto economy. It doesn’t create value so it should not be considered an asset.

Re: Global real interest rates and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018 (2020)

#115

Post by chordalkeyboard »

mindvirus wrote: post #70
jsweojtj wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a dollar worth besides what it can purchase? Put another way, if the number of dollars is constant in your account between today and tomorrow, but you can purchase less with it, you've lost wealth.

I understand but given the OPs comment, I would think it's always the case. Given the choice between a dollar today and a dollar tomorrow, you should always choose a dollar today since you can choose not to spend it. So it's strictly better than a dollar tomorrow. The only time I see that it wouldn't be true is if there was risk in carrying it - taxes, negative interest rates, or theft. I could see for example a tonn…

Everyone is right, there is a marginal bias so that the natural rate of interest is always positive but when storage costs and risk and fungibility/hedges/insurance are factored in the rate can be positive or negative. Like when the cost of oil was positive recently last year.

Re: Global real interest rates and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018 (2020)

#116

Post by makomk »

snowwrestler wrote: post #80
peteretep wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mass death Covid has killed a lot of people and created a lot of heart-break, and it would be heartless to try and minimise that or to view it in purely economic times in this moment. However, I think that in 100 years, future historians will describe the effect of the deaths itself as being pretty negligable: maybe 10% over the expected rate without Covid in 2020 and 2021, maybe 5m people in each year total, again…

I think the opposite; as society continues to get better at responding to disease and preventing death, the social allowance for "expected" deaths declines. The U.S. Civil War 150 years ago is a good benchmark. We look back now at the level of death with horror, especially deaths among those receiving what passed for medical treatment back then. But of course back then, that was how medicine worked and it was not rem…

The trouble is that people's expectations for what a "competent response" should be able to achieve don't actually seem to have any basis in reality. Pandemic response plans just fundamentally aren't designed to stop a respiratory pandemic like this one, at best they try to mitigate a little of the damage and even a lot of that is experimental and untested. (We don't even know something as basic as how effective school closures are against flu pandemics!) SARS and MERS had very different characteristics which made contact tracing a lot more effective against them; the UK, US and most other countries tried using the same approach that worked against them and it failed (and started a bazillion conspiracy theories about why the UK abandoned it). People's expectations seem to have more to do with cynical partisan political attempts to exploit the pandemic than reality.

Re: Global real interest rates and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018 (2020)

#117

Post by makomk »

dnautics wrote: post #102
steveBK123 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I’m not sure exactly how you meant it, so I won’t direct this at you, just generally... I can’t get over the techbro straw man of the “lockdown” I’ve seen thrown around a lot. First, compared to most of Asia that actually got this virus under control, we have never really had much of a true lockdown here. Second, it’s not the lockdown, its the pandemic. In most areas economic activity dropped off well before an…

> we have never really had much of a true lockdown here. And parts of europe had more of a lockdown than the US and the population fatality rate is worse. I wonder if covid just doesn't care about lockdowns; the countries that haven't gotten hit badly are 1) an island. 2) an isolated continent. 3) an island 4) a country that sits on a peninsula that has a hugely militarized impermeable border. and 5) a group of islan…

It's also bad pretty much everywhere in Europe as well. During the first wave, everyone pointed to the Czech Republic as a country that'd done well. They currently have about the same Covid mortality rate as the UK in per-capita terms, last I saw, which had one of the deadlier outbreaks. (Also, the UK isn't much like an island in terms of connectivity to the rest of Europe, and that probably matters more than physical geography.)

Re: Global real interest rates and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018 (2020)

#119

Post by ajmadesc »

orasis wrote: post #114
hanniabu wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto is a Ponzi scheme. I've never heard anybody educated on the matter make this statement. It's always from someone that doesn't understand it and therefore thinks it's a scam.

There is no crypto economy. It doesn’t create value so it should not be considered an asset.

Do contract lawyers add value?

Re: Global real interest rates and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018 (2020)

#120

Post by atom_arranger »

snowwrestler wrote: post #80
peteretep wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mass death Covid has killed a lot of people and created a lot of heart-break, and it would be heartless to try and minimise that or to view it in purely economic times in this moment. However, I think that in 100 years, future historians will describe the effect of the deaths itself as being pretty negligable: maybe 10% over the expected rate without Covid in 2020 and 2021, maybe 5m people in each year total, again…

I think the opposite; as society continues to get better at responding to disease and preventing death, the social allowance for "expected" deaths declines. The U.S. Civil War 150 years ago is a good benchmark. We look back now at the level of death with horror, especially deaths among those receiving what passed for medical treatment back then. But of course back then, that was how medicine worked and it was not rem…

I hope people 100 years from now have better things to do than judge or condemn their great great grandparents response to a pandemic.
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