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Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

economictimes.indiatimes.com

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Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#111

Post by AnthonyMouse »

avidiax wrote: post #81
hax0ron3 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal immigration brings masses of people from more corrupt, disordered, and perhaps lower average intelligence societies into the US in conditions that make it hard for even the ones who are capable of assimilation to assimilate. It also constitutes a massive flouting of the law for the benefit of business, which sets a bad precedent and lowers public trust in institutions. It also contributes to rising racial ten…

If you really want to get rid of illegal immigrants, you don't need ICE doing sweeps. Just make them unemployable. Setup an effective employment eligibility system, and require that employers verify the workers in the system before any payment over $100. Collect biometrics from workers and verify against IRS records. Employers that flout this get fines of 10x wages paid, up to N% of revenue, and maybe jailtime for ow…

There's a better way than that. The way the US tax system actually works is incredibly misleading:

1) We pretend to have an income tax but then make it work like a consumption tax in practice. Ordinary people put earnings in excess of spending in a 401k and defer the tax until they want to spend the money. Rich people defer capital gains indefinitely until they want to spend the money. It's an income tax on paper but a consumption tax in practice, and doing it that way is much more complicated than just using a consumption tax.

2) We pretend to have a progressive income tax, but then impose benefits phase outs that fully cancel out the difference in marginal rates between the poor and the rich. Convert the benefits to cash and eliminate the phase outs and you get something which is equally if not more progressive, significantly more efficient and dramatically less complicated.

So, you can throw all of that out and replace it with a flat rate consumption tax and a UBI and it would be as close to a Pareto optimal improvement as anything in politics ever is.

Which also makes a huge amount of headway against the illegal immigration problem, because another disadvantage of pretending to have an income tax is that it effectively subsidizes anyone paying people under the table since then they're not paying the tax. Whereas if people working under the table still have to pay the consumption tax on everything they buy, and they also don't receive the UBI because they're not lawful residents, they'd be at a disadvantage relative to ordinary citizens, instead of the existing system where breaking the rules makes you better off.

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#112

Post by brazukadev »

laughing_man wrote: post #30
yalogin wrote: post #28

I am actually convinced that the last year started the descent of the U.S. as the world’s super power. No wonder U.S. treasuries lost trust. It’s only going to get worse. It doesn’t matter what some billionaires do/get from their ability to manipulate some powers be. The rest of the investment community understands that free markets are strengthened by rule of law and adherence to the law and deploying a self styled…

People have been convinced of that my entire life, and I'm old now.

A lot of English people still have issues accepting they are not a world super power anymore.

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#113

Post by rwmj »

vintermann wrote: post #107
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One less conspiratorial but more pernicious angle, is that attacking things that are good but complex is a great strategy for troll politicians who don't care about the success of their country but just like the attention. See Brexit, and free trade in general. It's a good way to get "the establishment" to gang up on you and defend something complicated while you present simple but wrong alternatives and promise the…

For Brexit in particular, it seems clear to me that EU politicians, but the UK ones in particular, used EU as a scapegoat for unpopular economic policy that they themselves actually want, but can't justify effectively to their constituents. "We can't help it, it's an EU requirement" when leaving out that in the EU, their guys totally supported it. That was bound to backfire at some point or another. I think you're ri…

The alternative is everything falling apart at home and our manufacturing industries declining dramatically. Maybe the "unpopular economic policy" wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#114

Post by watwut »

BobbyJo wrote: post #77
fnordpiglet wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who lives a day to day life, I’m pretty happy for things that are good for my day to day life. Some abstract quasi moralistic reason that things should be tougher so we compete harder feels a little out of touch. I’d note that it’s not the case the US produces nothing, or that it’s lost its capacity to innovate. Effectively most technology, especially software, but hardware as well, is concentrated in the…

> Some abstract quasi moralistic reason that things should be tougher so we compete harder feels a little out of touch. I don't see how any of those descriptions fit what I've said. Also, note, things should indeed not be tougher. A consequence of our economy being so focused on financialization of overseas productivity is that the wealth created from that activity tends to be much more concentrated than that produce…

Bessent is great example of sycophantic photogenic personality.

He knows he is lying and he knows he is harming the economy and people in it. But, that does not matter to him.

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#115

Post by IsTom »

cmcaleer wrote: post #73
BobbyJo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a reserve currency puts a gun to your economy's head. It creates an asymmetry where domestic production of material goods has to jump a gap created by favorable exchange rates in PPP terms. Its great for the day to day life style of your citizens, as other economy's do indeed pay tribute, in a sense, to their consumption of goods produced overseas. However, being paid to do nothing becomes a real problem when t…

It's as much a gun to adversaries' heads if they hold lots of your bonds (China used to hold over $1T in USTs) so they would have an interest in not having that blow up by not annoying the US so much they refuse to pay foreign bonds. It's also kind of neat as a financial MAD instrument, because China obviously can't just get everyone to go into their brokerage and market sell a trillion in USTs so they get a lever to…

They can also just not roll them over. That takes time, but it's a good % of holdings each year.

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#116

Post by InsideOutSanta »

hax0ron3 wrote: post #70
IAmGraydon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that he has done countless things that are harmful to the US and not a single thing that is in the country's best interests tells me all I need to know. Either he's aligned with an enemy or he just hates the country and wants to destroy it.

I disagree with probably the majority of Trump's main policy ideas, but I think a strong case can be made that his immigration policies are in the country's best interests. Not all of them, but as a whole.

Immigration in general is good for a country, and relatively uncontrolled immigration is one of the reasons for America's prior economic strength.

Even if you disagree, Trump's policies have not been effective at anything, apart from creating headlines.

These same headlines have secondary negative effects for the US, like hurting international tourism.

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#117

Post by californical »

laughing_man wrote: post #30
yalogin wrote: post #28

I am actually convinced that the last year started the descent of the U.S. as the world’s super power. No wonder U.S. treasuries lost trust. It’s only going to get worse. It doesn’t matter what some billionaires do/get from their ability to manipulate some powers be. The rest of the investment community understands that free markets are strengthened by rule of law and adherence to the law and deploying a self styled…

People have been convinced of that my entire life, and I'm old now.

My parents refused to digitize their precious memories stored in VHS tapes. We’ve watched them every few years, and whenever I’be tried to convince them to digitize the tapes, my dad says “oh we’ve been hearing about vhs tapes degrading forever now, it still works”

Meanwhile the video fades more and more every few years, you can barely even make out faces and objects in the frames now. But it’s happened so slowly that he never really realized that it was happening all along

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#118

Post by 0x3f »

vintermann wrote: post #107
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One less conspiratorial but more pernicious angle, is that attacking things that are good but complex is a great strategy for troll politicians who don't care about the success of their country but just like the attention. See Brexit, and free trade in general. It's a good way to get "the establishment" to gang up on you and defend something complicated while you present simple but wrong alternatives and promise the…

For Brexit in particular, it seems clear to me that EU politicians, but the UK ones in particular, used EU as a scapegoat for unpopular economic policy that they themselves actually want, but can't justify effectively to their constituents. "We can't help it, it's an EU requirement" when leaving out that in the EU, their guys totally supported it. That was bound to backfire at some point or another. I think you're ri…

The public is almost fully to blame, and gets the government it deserves. I only hedge a little because education is in control of the state, so to some degree people don't choose whether to be educated on the relevant matters.

It may be familiarity breeding contempt but I find members of the British public in particular very myopic in obtaining benefits for 'their group'. There's very little interest in society as a whole.

Politicians simply bend in order not to upset any of the key voting blocs. But you understand that's a selection bias: you wouldn't exist as a successful politician if you didn't do this. All those who go another path are doomed to obscurity.

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#119

Post by AnthonyMouse »

laughing_man wrote: post #99
rapind wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This glosses over what Bush was handed from the previous guy and then what he left behind for the next guy.

The "previous guy" was constrained by a once-in-a-lifetime Congress that was serious about deficits, and he also benefited by another once-in-a-lifetime spurt of economic growth that dramatically increased tax revenue. As soon as Congress realized they'd been handed a deficit-free budget they went about spending with wild abandon. And anyway, since that guy we've had two presidents over three terms where the other pa…

Here's the better question: If you were serious about reducing the deficit, what would you cut?

It should be possible to reduce Medicare costs significantly by going after healthcare costs in general, i.e. create a ton of new medical residency slots and train a lot of new doctors, and make the healthcare companies actually compete with each other. The AMA and healthcare companies are going to fight you hard.

We currently make large social security payments to affluent retirees who paid in less than we're paying them out. We could reform the system to cost less, i.e. not pay out as much to people who don't need the money. The AARP isn't going to like it.

The DoD budget is pretty big and a lot of it is waste or corruption. But to do this well you have to be good at identifying which parts, you still can't eliminate all of it because some of it is pretty important, and this one is the smallest of the three. And the defense contractors will try to stop you.

To make a meaningful dent in the deficit you would have to do at least two of those but no one is willing to do any of them.

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#120

Post by ChrisGreenHeur »

unsnap_biceps wrote: post #84
hax0ron3 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that your idea would be better. That said, it is still quite possible that even Trump's immigration approach is overall more good than bad for the country.

It's really not. They're deporting less people than Biden did during the same time[1]. They're spending record amounts of money per person deported as well. I don't disagree that we should be deporting people faster, but this is not the way to accomplish that goal at all. Nor should we be building huge detention facilities. We should be making the process go smoother and faster, not holding people. [1] https://en.wik…

If you let in 100 and then throw out 90 you have thrown out many more than if you let in 10 but throw out 30. But the end result is better.
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