Live data from Hacker News

Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

wilsoniumite.com

221–230 of 697 posts

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all companies fire 50% of their engineers, how will anybody find similar new jobs? In an ideal world software productivity doubling WOULD be a huge boon for the economy IF companies used the increased productivity of their engineers as a way to manage tech debt, R&D and other issues that were put in the backlog because historically there were no resources for this. In reality all companies look at increased produc…

If software engineer productivity basically doubled as is being claimed in this thread, I think you'd see companies scrambling to lay off everyone else in an effort to hire even more software engineers. They'd be by far the most valuable and productive employees at every tech company and you'd be foolish not to have as many as you can. I'm being a bit facetious but throughout history when a resource or profession tak…

You can't straight add/subtract effects that happen on very different time scales.

(1) Laying off people increases margins immediately.

(2) Creating new initiatives pays off in years, if initiatives are taken on carefully, not just thrown at walls.

That means even if (2) is happening, the signal won't show up for years, but (1) will happen immediately, regardless.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#222
> Here’s the current price of silver.

Not shown on the chart (and which couldn't have been predicted at the time of writing) is today's crash of almost 30% in that price.

Speculative bubbles happen. The narrative of people losing faith in currency made no sense, because that should pump the prices of durable commodities as well, if not instead of precious metals.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these are "communism"... people who don't know better use it as a "china bad" gotcha because it's about as far as their political education allows them to think but it really is way more complex than that. > Authoritarian. Totalitarian. Yes these apply, but they're not synonyms of communism. The Iranian government is authoritarian, totalitarian and absolutely not communist > Red fascism is an OLD term. But su…

I'm not sure left vs right is that useful a distinction. Both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany called themselves socialist, and both claimed to be doing what was best for their people.

The addition of "socialist" to the Nazi party's name was done in the early 1920s to appeal to socialist-leaning people. Hitler was against the change but was overruled by the rest of the party's leadership.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#224

The question is there is no other place for money to go. Liquidity is still in abundance and no other market can capture that liquidity. Eurozone is a total mess, ECB is doing one reckless thing after another which will inevitably lead to Germany leaving Eurozone at some point. Japan market is a joke, Asia and emerging market has huge governance issues. Bond market has penalized the investors and only more pain is in…

Free market, but not like that (china).

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#225

I feel like there's some credibility to 'this time it's different' The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon - the US dollar is the world's main reserve currency, the US enforces international order and trade rules via its military strength, it dominates technology and culture through 'US defaultism'. I dont think AI even factors in to this. The US economy is priced for global reach - if it ma…

> I dont think AI even factors in to this.

I think another way to look at the expansion of the capitalist economy is the onboarding of people into entry day jobs and transitions of economies upward..

AI may have relatively little to do with the US' tantrums yet I think it has a lot to do with the end of expansion and a fast contraction of the availability of top jobs as the last economies enter the middle of the funnel can't be good.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#226

Where it's gonna crash to? Where is going the capital move to when everythings going up? (except crypto apparently)

Why does the capital have to go anywhere? People just bid less and less for the same assets and prices go down. Margin calls happen and increase seller volume, prices go down further. And so on.

I'm not saying all this will happen. Just that capital doesn't have to "go" anywhere for a crash to occur.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#227
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on there, they have been very explicitly doing the opposite of reducing energy costs. The administration has been aggressively trying to cancel all sorts of energy projects, even projects that have almost been completed. At the same time they've been encouraging as much data center build out as possible. Lowering supply and increasing demand is hardly going to reduce energy costs. They have managed to significan…

I think it's a little bit more nuanced than what you say and that they generally are trying to increase energy supply while withdrawing from using heavy government subsidies or extensive regulations to pick the winners and losers. From a demand side, they aren't looking to restrict demand, but want to have ample supply to meet the demand.

If that was true they would have let incentives for new energy infrastructure (which can be net positive, given energy is a national level concern), draw down in a way that didn't disrupt/destroy existing investment.

You can alter forward looking policy sensibly in a day. But you can't redline years of cooperative investment on the same day without destroying tremendous value (of the kind you claim to be working toward), credibility and trust.

I am baffled that performative flailing gets interpreted as progress, with such thin narratives.

The deeply counterproductive actions taken ostensibly to increase US investment in manufacturing are more of the same.

The destruction of valuable US research and capabilities, in the name of fiscal responsibility, only to continue fiscal irresponsibility is more of the same.

The destruction of diplomatic and defense alliances and influence, in the name of being stronger, is more of the same.

The private masked army roaming cities, harassing people with low relevance to their purported purpose, in the name of making the country safer: more of the same.

They all involve some truth, and then loud damaging counterproductive execution. Unless loud chaos is value.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#228
post #69

Stocks might go down if AI doesn't bring in enough revenue. The real risk seems to be currency depreciation though. The USD is already down 15% this year compared to the Euro. I'm worried about what the next FED chair appointee will do. JPow has stuck to his principles so far.

> The USD is already down 15% this year compared to the Euro.

It's down 12% since a year ago, but that's largely a reaction to the tariffs. It's been fairly stable since July or so and has only seen a small dip (and partial recovery) in the last couple of weeks.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/USDEUR=X/

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#229

I'm kinda new into economy crashes, was a kid in 2008, is there a way to protect of it?

I’ve been through several recessions.

Painfully I’ve learnt that you want to work in an industry that is largely recession proof.

Focus on industries that sell things that people need and will try to keep buying right down to their last buck.

Food, utilities, insurance. People don’t like sitting in the dark. People need water. People need to eat. People really don’t like living without insurance cover or to let cover lapse.

They don’t need Netflix, Disney+ or Prime. They don’t need Spotify. They don’t need training or e-learning. They don’t need luxury goods. They don’t need new motor vehicles. They don’t need holidays. They don’t need new iPhones or new computers.

Try and move now to an industry that has some security.

Investment wise diversification is key. Just pray that it doesn’t get so bad that banks start to fail.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#230
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why you could not refinance when the rates went to 0%? In the US a lot of people did that in 2009/2010 and then again during COVID

Refinancing and loans work differently outside of the U.S. what I don't remember is exactly how. If I recall, you can't refinance without paying

Well, you can go to another bank so that they can cover your mortgage and open a new one with new rates/conditions.

That you can do anywhere as long as you have a collateral/guarantor.

Post reply on HN