Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds • Hacker News Board

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#181

Post by betty_staples » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 4:07 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #178

hulitu wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe isn't learning anything. Europe is dreaming to be a great empire, while licking the butt of another great empire.

...what? That literally makes no sense. "Europe" is not a country. "Europe" does not dream of being an empire, because it has no cohesive governing body or even identity as a whole - maybe France or UK dream of being empires but collectively? Does Slovakia or Portugal dream of being empires? That is such a naively simplistic view of how the world works it reads like it's straight from a Daily Mail or Fox News headlin…

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Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#182

Post by gambiting » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

betty_staples wrote: post #181

gambiting wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...what? That literally makes no sense. "Europe" is not a country. "Europe" does not dream of being an empire, because it has no cohesive governing body or even identity as a whole - maybe France or UK dream of being empires but collectively? Does Slovakia or Portugal dream of being empires? That is such a naively simplistic view of how the world works it reads like it's straight from a Daily Mail or Fox News headlin…

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>>Europe has fantasies of being a mighty empire

Again, is this Europe in the room with us? Or have you eaten too much American propaganda that treats "Europe" as if it was one country? Maybe it's time to lie down my dude.

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#183

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #173

kasey_junk wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also part of the reserve currency dynamics. It’s not clear how the modern bond market will work in a post dollar world, we frankly don’t have an example. It’s entirely possible that the EU can overcome the political struggles that a true EU bond brings about (I’d love to see how a bond would work that both the Hungarian and Danish and French and Greek governments would back long term) but it seems just as likely…

Indeed, this is both complex and risky, but it is fairly clear by now that we need to do something concrete rather than just yak about it. Hungary is indeed a problem (and has been for a long time) but I'm actually impressed with the restraint shown by the bloc to let Hungarians deal with this on their own terms as long as it does not stop the EU from handling foreign policy. The trade imbalance angle is exactly the…

Looks like it's starting. Kudos for some courage and will on the EU's part.

Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46722594 - January 2026

Macron says €300 billion in European savings flown to the US every year will be invested in Europe from now on. All 27 EU states agreed to establish the S&I Union, a step toward the full Capital Market Union - https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1qjtvtl/macron_says... - January 22nd, 2026

https://streamable.com/m4dejv

Savings and investments union - https://finance.ec.europa.eu/regulation-and-supervision/savi... - December 4th, 2025

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#184

Post by ethbr1 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

scoofy wrote: post #166

ethbr1 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skirting close to or breaking the law has substantially worse outcomes in divided government. The GOP paranoia about November smacks of a belated realization that there might be consequences for things that were done.

I mean, they've gerrymandered the country so much it's nearly impossible... good luck to the ones with very "efficiently" cracked districts.

Gerrymandering (on any side) isn't going to decrease unless the federal government begins enforcing it under Constitutional and civil rights law, with Supreme Court blessing.

Among its many flaws, the Constitution should have had a "elections run by an objectively fair method to each citizen" caveat before giving states the right to run their own elections.

But that would have been pretty progressive for the late 18th century...

In my dream world, we'd put enforceable boundaries on how much gerrymandering is acceptable via statistically stable methods (e.g. efficiency gap calculations).

The easier solution would have been parliamentary-style proportional party list representation, but I'm not sure the fairness benefits outweigh the "not being able to vote for your individual" drawbacks.

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#185

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

betty_staples wrote: post #181

gambiting wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...what? That literally makes no sense. "Europe" is not a country. "Europe" does not dream of being an empire, because it has no cohesive governing body or even identity as a whole - maybe France or UK dream of being empires but collectively? Does Slovakia or Portugal dream of being empires? That is such a naively simplistic view of how the world works it reads like it's straight from a Daily Mail or Fox News headlin…

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[deleted]

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#186

Post by Braxton1980 » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 4:31 AM UTC

loeg wrote: post #58

Braxton1980 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every 1st world country has a more predictable and honest leader right now

You've answered a different question than the one I asked. I think the US will continue to pay its debts, under this president and the one who replaces him in three years.

1. Trump has constantly stated how he believes the US has spent money and lives doing things for the rest of the world. He just did it with Canada this week saying "Canada exists because of the US'.

2. The majority of his followers have some level of cult like adoration for him and therefore he isn't worried about losing support for radical actions.

3. Republican voters have been told to not trust the experts, news, or the opposing political party which eliminates all outside sources of information. This allows them to make claims about our debt or why we shouldn't pay it and many of these voters won't get opposing views.

4. Trump wants a massive increase in spending for the military and has cut taxes. While at the same time Republicans ran on the high debt. Not paying it by claiming it's invalid solves that.

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#187

Post by Braxton1980 » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 4:33 AM UTC

loeg wrote: post #74

vkou wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This president has publicly mulled not paying its debts. It's time to stop magical, wishful thinking about how you want the world to be, and deal with the world as it is.

The president can mull whatever he wants; he doesn't have the authority to not pay.

You can't be serious, Trump doesn't care. He can do whatever he wants, drag it through the courts for a long time. If he loses try another method

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#188

Post by lelanthran » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 8:37 AM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #30

margalabargala wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1/4000th in this context seems huge to be honest.

If the US paid $8B towards it debt every _day_ it would take over thirteen _years_ (completely ignoring interest accumulation, which isn't realistic) to pay off $38T in debt. I don't see how this is huge in context, it is indeed symbolic. Please don't get me wrong here, I am neither advocating the selling or not selling of US bonds. This specific sale just isn't statically significant in a vacuum. If this precipitate…

> If the US paid $8B towards it debt every _day_ it would take over thirteen _years_ (completely ignoring interest accumulation, which isn't realistic) to pay off $38T in debt.

> I don't see how this is huge in context, it is indeed symbolic.

I think if you approach the average new home buyer and said "We've reduced your bond repayment term to 13 years. Your monthly repayment will not increase" they will certainly consider it more than symbolic.

IOW, 13 years to payback is nothing compared to what we usually see for PE ratios of a bubbling stock, or repayment terms on a large loan, etc - it is definitely much much more impactful than you think.

> This specific sale just isn't statically significant in a vacuum. If this precipitates a snowball effect of bond-selling, completely different story.

I think that's the problem here - we're (all the commenters) trying to determine if this is the first pebble that starts the avalanche. All bank runs (in this case, a run on the debt in US dollars) starts with small but significant withdrawals (i.e. selling your dollars for some other money) that indicate to other holders to get their money out while it is still there to be gotten.

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#189

Post by dripdry45 » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:06 AM UTC

ethbr1 wrote: post #160

hadlock wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only goal right now for a lot of people in Washington is to make "Number Go Up" ahead of November. So far the current strategies haven't been working, so they're going to have to get a lot more aggressive. Medium and long term consequences are a problem for the future.

Skirting close to or breaking the law has substantially worse outcomes in divided government. The GOP paranoia about November smacks of a belated realization that there might be consequences for things that were done.

They are going to pass the save act, which disenfranchise is something like 60% of women voters in the United States. This will effectively invalidate a significant portion of Democrat voters right before the election, and before they were able to change their data

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#190

Post by dripdry45 » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:10 AM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #72

zppln wrote: post #9

What are some realistic alternatives to US markets here? Selling is one thing, the question is what to buy instead? I mean, everyone starting to buy european instead would be great for stock prices, but it wouldn't make the underlying assets more valuable, right?

If you divest US bonds, you would probably put them into bonds from other nations (and corporate bonds from non-US companies), easiest thing is to try to find a index to track; Vanguard's BNDX tracks the Bloomberg Global Aggregate ex-USD Float Adjusted RIC Capped Index (Hedged). In a mark to market world, the value of a bond is its acquisition cost, so buying bonds enough to raise prices increases their value, but no…

Large institutions have been moving in this direction for about a year. I just put together a fairly more stable and diversified portfolio that is effectively only about 15% in the US. It involves some short-term private equity, lots of commodities, European cyclicals and financials, some small Deep value, energy and climate change infrastructure is on solid ground and being well funded around most of the world… they really are plenty of bright spots and lots of good advice out there, even from public letters from places like Van Eck, Piko, GMO funds, and others.

There are a number of very important categories to avoid, like convertibles, but overall it’s quite possible if you have a little bit of acumen with investing.