Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by dasil003 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

xivzgrev wrote: post #536

mmaunder wrote: post #522

What is different about this time is how much a crash is expected, which is reflected in the run up in the gold price, for one. It’s also reflected in the public discourse about the high probability of a crash - as with this post and many others over the past couple years. 2008 was sudden and unexpected by most. The dot com crash was sudden and unexpected by most. If we crashed today it would have been expected by mo…

What if the rise in index funds is a bubble on its own? It's massive and increasing amounts of money that is not price sensitive and keeps growing. There's an underlying bubble message: "the stock market always bounces back, so keep plowing your money into it even when it's down". Apparently passive funds are 60% of mutual funds / ETFs now https://www.avantisinvestors.com/avantis-insights/has-passiv... Even more insi…

I've been invested largely in US index funds for a while now, and I've definitely thought about this. My conclusion is S&P 500 is too big too fail, everyone with various forms of power in the US (economic, political, etc) are incentivized to keep the music going. Sure it feels unsustainable, but there is no way going active can help me—I don't have enough access to the right people, and even if I did, it's better as a hedge strategy. Someone who has a billion dollars can easily pace a bunch of $10M bets on long-shot hedges that will mint a fortune when the music stops. Theoretically I could do something similar at smaller scale, but the people smart enough to have credible strategies are not talking to me, and even if they did I don't have the expertise to judge the advice (the super rich don't either, but at least AUM volume is some signal of competence).

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

#552

Post by izacus » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

fcantournet wrote: post #247

robinsoncrusue wrote: post #171

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…

ECB is doing one reckless thing after another which will inevitably lead to Germany leaving Eurozone at some point. I'm not even sure what you're trying to say with the rest of it but this is nonsense. The ECB policy IS German, and has been for 3 decades. All of germany's economy is organized around the existence of the eurozone with Germany controlling a unified monetary policy.

One thing I can always be sure about, is reading premium gold plated, high quality, absolute dumbest nonsense about EU policies and state of EU on this website.

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

#553

Post by constantcrying » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

Expecting the crash of the most important economy in the world based on two graphs, where you do chart astrology, is such an insanely stupid argument it is hard to fathom.

With all these charlatans predicting imminent collapse it is always imperative to consider how strongly they believe in their revealed preferences, based on how much they have invested in their position. That said, how much money does OP have invested e.g. in shorting the S&P 500? Or any equivalent. Let me guess, zero dollars.

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

#554

Post by fogzen » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 3:54 PM UTC

mmaunder wrote: post #522

What is different about this time is how much a crash is expected, which is reflected in the run up in the gold price, for one. It’s also reflected in the public discourse about the high probability of a crash - as with this post and many others over the past couple years. 2008 was sudden and unexpected by most. The dot com crash was sudden and unexpected by most. If we crashed today it would have been expected by mo…

Gold has crashed with previous economic crashes. In 2008 it fell 30%, silver fell by 50%.

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

#555

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#556

Post by HNisCIS » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #322

themafia wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to eat them. You just have to erect significant barriers to hoarding wealth, particularly in off shore devices, and you have to create constant pressure to ensure that stored wealth is best re-invested in the economy at large. These aren't even hard problems. Until you meet someone in Congress. Then it suddenly seems hopeless.

ensure that stored wealth is best re-invested in the economy at large Pretty sure the vast, vast bulk of wealth held by the richest US households is indeed “reinvested in the economy at large”. Where do you think it is instead?

When you invest you get shares. Shares come with votes. Do you think these people are voting to make your life better or do you think they're voting to arbitrarily raise prices to increase the value of their shares?

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

#557

Post by panarky » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:01 PM UTC

Lutger wrote: post #379

panarky wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The international "rules-based order" is a good idea when most nations play by the rules most of the time, and when the most powerful at least pretend to follow the same rules as everyone else. A world order based on rules makes it possible to live at a much higher level of abstraction. Abstractions like rule of law, democracy, government currencies and stock exchanges are intangible and imaginary. They're mostly jus…

Neither is 'real'. The power of might depends on belief just as much as the power of rules. You need a whole lot of compliance, even when forced by fear and terror, to just keep up a police state. The belief consists of where people think other people assign authority to, at large. But that can be just as brittle as a meme stock if the time is right. Social reality is always constructed. No single construction is mor…

A system that is closer to physical, tangible reality is more "real" than one built on many layers of concepts, beliefs and ideas.

Just as "real assets" like buildings, machinery and metals are more "real" than abstract assets.

Abstract assets like shares of a corporation, intellectual property, cash in a bank account, promises to deliver a commodity in the future, and other intangible concepts only exist because we collectively believe they exist and trust each other to follow rules.

There are real weapons and prisons at the bottom of this stack of abstractions to force people to comply, but it's mostly collective belief, trust, culture and tradition.

When we devolve from a rules-based order to might-makes-right, those layers of abstraction between us and the weapons evaporate, and ordinary people like moms and ER nurses get gunned down in broad daylight by agents of the state asserting raw power.

Abstractions like law and due process evaporate, and the "real world" underneath is nasty, brutish and short.

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

#558

Post by luses » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #378

enraged_camel wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Isn’t hoarded wealth a no-op? It just reduces the supply of whatever they are hoarding. It’s not. Wealth creates political power, which the wealthy wield to stack the odds in their own favor at the expense of everyone else.

Is that the topic of discussion? I thought it was something along the lines of “tax the rich so we can do things with the money”. That is the area I’m saying it is a no-op in. Statements without context frequently don’t mean the same as what they mean with context.

this argument ignores basic opportunity costs. taxing that wealth allows the state to redirect labor and materials production and distribution toward high-utility public goods: high-speed rail, dense urban cores, and affordable housing. instead of subsidizing insolvent suburbs, we could be modernizing the logistics network and actually growing the real economy.

worse, you completely miss the political dimension. hoarded wealth buys the lobbying power to prevent these necessary structural changes. you are engaging in the exact kind of apologetics that has led to american infrastructure collapsing while the capital class extracts rent. thinking that resource allocation is a 'no-op' is economically illiterate

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

#559

Post by HNisCIS » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #500

shimman wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supporting companies that profit off of misery, reduce human meaningfulness, those that innovate the surveillance state; why is it so hard to support policies like giving US school children free breakfast + lunch, medicare for all, public housing, universal childcare, federally mandated paid time off, universal higher education + vocational training, and a public jobs program (all things that have 70-90% voter approv…

I dunno, I love my iPhone, especially when I use it to take photos of my kids. Amazon is pretty great, too. Also schoolchildren in my state have had free school breakfast & lunch since Covid.

Do you see what's going on around you or do you just stare at pictures of cats on your iPhone™

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

#560

Post by testing22321 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #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.

Gold the same.

$15 Trillion gone yesterday