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Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

reuters.com

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Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#481

Post by adrian_b »

eggy wrote: post #243
spamizbad wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no chance US will default on its debts Until Trump says he's going to, then his boosters will declare its a genius maneuver and actually its Joe Biden's fault (Joe made him do it!)

Do you the think the EU and its individual country members from 1949 to present carried their fair share of the NATO spending ($55 to $60T), or troops and equipment deployments, or did they "default" on their side of the treaty? The US has paid 65 to 70% of the total of $1.4 to 1.5T/year from 2018 to 2025. That's 9.8T in 8 years (2018 included). Our soldiers, not theirs, carried the weight. If you go per capita, The…

The share of the European countries in supporting NATO has been higher than the official numbers.

For instance, when the East-European countries have been admitted into NATO they were forced to pay dearly for this, with many billions of $ for various lucrative and overpriced contracts assigned to some well-connected US companies (e.g. Bechtel), either for various infrastructure projects or for military acquisitions.

Those billions of $ do not appear in the US budget, but they have enriched certain US businessmen.

It is normal for a regular US citizen to believe that NATO has not been beneficial for himself/herself, because this is true, but what regular citizens are not aware of is that NATO has been a great source of profits for some US citizens who are more equal than the others.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#482

Post by mcswell »

orwin wrote: post #363
adventured wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming NATO is somehow critical for the US. It is not. NATO is critical for the European powers (those not named Russia). The US doesn't require it. The US doesn't need to defend Europe any longer. And it's clear the Europeans don't want the US there, so it works out great. Europe can boost its defense spending by ~$300 billion to make up the difference, or not, whatever they choose to do is up to them. The…

I wish europe was out of NATO. It does nothing to defend europe, bring us in wars we didn't ask for, and manufacture crisis European still suffer from (Syria refugee). It force its "allies" to buy defective weapons that are basically spyware, and still spy on them just in case. It force other allies to spill their blood in the middle East. The only "good" thing it did was breaking Sarajevo's siege in the mid 90s, but…

I am an American, so my view of the situation over there is not...well informed. But I have wondered whether the EU couldn't set itself up as the New NATO. All European (unless Canada decides to join you), and omitting some of the old NATO provisions that are causing problems, like the ability of one member country to veto everyone else (I'm looking at you, Hungary). Would it work? Or is the EU infrastructure to weak to do that?

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#483

Post by StephenHerlihyy »

BunsanSpace wrote: post #460
StephenHerlihyy wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposition to American hegemony shifted from Europe (ie the USSR) to Asia (ie China). To that end, NATO lacks the capacity to meaningfully impact a conflict in the Pacific. The EU simply does not have the means to project power in that way nor do they have the ability to meaningfully implement economic policies that would effectively reduce Chinese growth. Trump is an asshole, but the strategy hasn’t really chang…

> The truth is though that Europe is dead weight. Their economy is anemic, their still too fragmented militarily What an incredibly ignorant statement. Europe's economy in real terms is doing fine, their productivity is growing. The US's economy only looks good on paper, but outside of the AI bubble, companies aren't growing wages are stagnant with inflation. Europe is also on the verge of federalization. But you hav…

Over the past 15 years the European economy has grown from 16.25 to 18.50 trillion per World Bank. In 2008 the combined economic strength of the EU was 110% of the United State's. Today it's ~65%. By and large the European economy completely missed the mark on the Internet/Web3.0 technology revolution. You certainly have bright spots like ASML, but those are the exception and not the rule. It's reindustrialization efforts are facing massive head wins from energy costs and China is absolutely wrecking their neo-colonial African holdings.

I hope the EU moves to a more Federalized model of governance - it would certainly benefit them. And I agree that it won't be easy. I am not sure California and Texas would agree to the model the United States has today. I can't even imagine what it would be like for Germany and France. But they have some serious issues to address. These are some foundational changes that are unlikely to happen in the next year or two.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#484

Post by NelsonMinar »

afavour wrote: post #42

It's symbolism. But it's important symbolism. Far more notable, I think, is Macron saying this morning that Europe needs more investment from China. Canada signing a deal with China to allow their cars to be sold in the country. It's all a sliding slope until it reaches a breaking point and falls off like a cliff. EDIT: to quote the Canadian PN earlier today: “American hegemony in particular helped provide public goo…

The article has a quote from the investment director saying it is not symbolism. "The decision is rooted in the poor U.S. government finances, which make us think that we need to make an effort to find an alternative way of conducting our liquidity and risk management"

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#485

Post by overfeed »

lingrush4 wrote: post #315
btbuildem wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not pure symbolism. The most effective way to reduce the global threat the US is appearing to pose more as of late, is to hit the dollar. The US economy is in a very precarious state, tensions along political ideology lines are high, and it would not take much more than a worsening of economic conditions plus a catalyst event to kick off armed unrest within the country. A new civil war that drives the US to frag…

No, it's pure symbolism. Countries don't purchase US treasuries to be charitable to the US. This hurts Denmark just as much as it hurts the US. And in relative terms, Denmark is going to feel the pain from this way more than the US since the US economy is 70x bigger than Denmark's.

You could measure this by looking at the Pensions fund performance vs US treasuries over the next decade or so.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#486

Post by seanw444 »

colechristensen wrote: post #391
seanw444 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a new global leader, likely in the form of China. Which I'm sure everyone would see as an improvement. Right?

You have to ask yourself, compared to current US leadership, is China actually all that bad? US is being driven by the personal whims of a deteriorating tyrant, Congress is allowing it and the courts are only doing a tiny amount of checking his power. You can't just say "despite everything happening we're still the good guys and China and Russia are the bad guys!" Osama bin Ladin won. The goals he had when he attacke…

> US is being driven by the personal whims of a deteriorating tyrant

Why does Hacker News make Trump sound so much more interesting than he really is?

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#488

Post by complianceowl »

histriosum wrote: post #318
complianceowl wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You clearly DON’T “get it”.. obviously Trump is different than Hitler, but to say he’s nothing remotely close is some serious handwaving. ICE is acting a LOT like the Gestapo. Trump is telling obvious lies and his supporters simply parrot it as fact. That was a big part of Hitlers power, the propaganda machine that made it acceptable for otherwise intelligent people to pretend to believe the obvious lies. Trump is ag…

[flagged]

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#489

Post by jacquesm »

dmitrygr wrote: post #479
jacquesm wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's your opinion, which you are of course welcome to. People buy treasuries because they expect a return. If a party is threatening to get into a shooting war with you your expectations of a return drop significantly. This then causes that party to protect their investment, the last one to defect will hold the bag. The US is signalling on all wavelengths that it is no longer the safest place to stash money, long t…

ok, let's run with your theory. Where does one safely stash a small-ish sum like ~$100B now?

You are so far out from understanding why pension funds put money in foreign government paper that I'm not sure where to begin explaining it. But the key is simply portfolio diversification. Institutional investors have access to a very large number of options on where, how and for how long they want to park their money that it isn't some kind of forced move to put their money in US Treasuries.

It's just a way to hedge their bets. In the larger scheme of things $100B isn't all that much (it may be to you, but even a small trading desk of a mid sized bank or multinational, say Royal Dutch Shell, or such) have access to that kind of money. They are not going to take the chance that Donald Trump on Monday morning, after eating a bad burger the night before, decides to unleash the might of the US military on their territory and be left holding the bag.

One downside of running a trade deficit with the rest of the world is that they have you by the short and curlies; if they dump your paper you will have to buy it back as fast as they can dump it to avoid a crash of your currency. That can get expensive really quickly.

Re: Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries

#490

Post by shagmin »

whimsicalism wrote: post #126
btbuildem wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not pure symbolism. The most effective way to reduce the global threat the US is appearing to pose more as of late, is to hit the dollar. The US economy is in a very precarious state, tensions along political ideology lines are high, and it would not take much more than a worsening of economic conditions plus a catalyst event to kick off armed unrest within the country. A new civil war that drives the US to frag…

I’m curious when people make comments like this, do they actually live in the US and believe this or has the media environment gotten so bad in Europe+ that people have no clue what’s real or not?

I get what you're saying and mostly somewhat agree with your point, but it's kind of funny thinking back and feeling the complete opposite. People like to argue which states would be better off in a civil war, meanwhile I grew up in an area where people liked to claim the south is going to rise yet again. And we do have a problem with militias.
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