Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

wilsoniumite.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 697 posts

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

#201

Post by bborud »

mschuster91 wrote: post #132
bborud wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China doesn’t need to project force. Economics might is sufficient. Yes, they want Taiwan, but that’s a silly national pride thing. It would not really benefit them to take it by force.

> Yes, they want Taiwan, but that’s a silly national pride thing. It would not really benefit them to take it by force. We thought the same about Putin, and yet he went and invaded Ukraine. We thought the same about Trump, and yet he went and abducted the president of a sovereign country. Never underestimate nationalist BS or outright mental deficiency.

The difference is desperation. Putin was facing instability and was afraid of ending up like Khadafi. He needed a war.

Xi is not facing those challenges. He wants Taiwan, but the Chinese play long games so he can wait.

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

#202

Post by bborud »

michaelsshaw wrote: post #44
bborud wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China seems to be the only candidate. But whatever happens it won’t be in the same way as before. As for whether it is better for everyone, that question became a lot harder in just the last year. Who is «everyone»? And what do we mean by «better»? With the US wanting to annex territory from its NATO allies, and engaging in extortionate tariffs, it is harder to argue that the US is good for Europe. Which is why Europ…

I disagree that something good for China is necessarily bad for the rest of the world, which you seem to imply here includes only Europe. China alone has a higher population than Europe and the USA combined. I'd say that even if things got worse for Europe, to humanity it still constitutes a net benefit. Lives aren't of less value just because they're in a (gasp) communist country.

I didn’t say or imply that.

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

#203

Post by bborud »

newsclues wrote: post #105
johnnyanmac wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. But China's aggression towards Taiwan and their recent rare earth metals move last year show that China does not have the worlds best interests at heart either. We're picking between two evils and China's evil is more predictable than the US's right now. This goes for Asia in general. Korea, Japan, and China spent centuries fighting and making them the de facto super power makes it easy to resume the…

How much coal do they burn? Did climate change suddenly become NOT an existential threat? Are their global fishing fleets sustainable? Where do the precursors for fentanyl come from?

They seem to have achieved peak coal and coal use is slowly declining. Its percentage of the energy mix has been declining over the last decade.

That’s not great, but it is a positive. And certainly better than we feared a decade ago.

The world isn’t static.

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

#204

Post by bborud »

operation_moose wrote: post #53
bborud wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have that. What has broken down is cooperation. The kind that has ensured relative peace for 80’ish years. That order is breaking down and creates instability. Instability means more conflict and less productive use of resources.

Well, cooperation with one specific player. Cooperation among the rest of the world is rapidly progressing in response.

Yes and no. Internal cohesion is weakened (the most extreme example of which is brexit) by resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia. At the same time new trade deals and alliances are formed and deepened.

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

#205

Post by ryoshoe »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #123
lm28469 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> communist country New things need new words to describe them, I know people love to call bad guys "nazis" or "communists" and that everyone seems stuck with 1939 lingo but come one. 1950s china isn't 1980s china which isn't 2026 china, yet they're all ""communists""

China is ruled by the Communist Party. It does not seem unreasonable to call them a communist country. Yes, I know, they have moved away from historical communism, and it's more of a "brand name" than an ideological description. Still, it is their chosen name for what they're doing.

Sure but this is like calling North Korea a democracy because the official name of the country is the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea"

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

#206

Post by stockresearcher »

dh2022 wrote: post #200
stockresearcher wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crap, I was wrong. Bill Ackman is trying to convince Bessent to do it. So while it may happen, it isn’t coming from inside the admin. One argument is that it could allow for lower rates, BTW. (This is true, it very well could). And also, if it happened it would be for newly issued mortgages. Existing mortgages have language in the contract that you couldn’t just unilaterally change

How would prepayment penalties lower interest rates ? I really do not see how.

Your lender definitely wants to get paid back, but they don’t necessarily want to get paid back right now. Because then they have a pile of money and they need to find something to do with it.

Consumers have a tendency to pay loans back early when the bank doesn’t have any more profitable alternatives. Consumers also have a tendency to NOT pay loans back early when the bank does have more profitable alternatives.

But you know that the first situation is worse for the bank than the second situation. So they do account for this, to a degree, when they give you a loan. In theory they would be willing to give you a lower interest rate if you gave up your prepayment option. In theory. In reality? Who knows.

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

#207

Post by Noaidi »

repelsteeltje wrote: post #184
Noaidi wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can invest in silver mining stocks, and be concerned about food at the same time. One is for long-term survival. The other is for short term survival. You can think of things like toilet paper and razors as bartering tools or actual new money, and the golden silver investments as objection of the current money you have right now. My grandfather lives in a great depression in Manhattan. He told me some crazy stori…

Coincidentally: Silver plunges 30% in worst day since 1980 https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/30/silver-gold-fall-price-usd-d...

Where was the news when silver was going up and having the best days it’s had since 1981?

On January 26, 2026, silver experienced its largest one-day jump in 45 years, with front-month futures soaring by 14%. Spot silver prices surged to over $109 per ounce that day, driven by heightened safe-haven demand and industrial usage. The rally continued to push silver prices toward $120 by January 29, 2026.

And regardless, silver is still at an all-time high.

When you start saying that the news is biased against certain commodities or equities, you’ll start to see how the game is played. This is a tactic of JP Morgan.

Volatility is expected. Always remember that. Volatility is expected in fragile economies.

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

#208

Post by ranguna »

bborud wrote: post #204
operation_moose wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, cooperation with one specific player. Cooperation among the rest of the world is rapidly progressing in response.

Yes and no. Internal cohesion is weakened (the most extreme example of which is brexit) by resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia. At the same time new trade deals and alliances are formed and deepened.

That's a good overview. As usual: things are complex, not necessarily bad overall.

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

#209

Post by tim333 »

torginus wrote: post #97
singularity2001 wrote: post #63

Maybe simultaneous with the crash of the Chinese economy, which was predicted for 40 years now

I don't understand why people expect the Chinese economy to crash - they can basically make everything, a lot of which is internationally competitive, they can trade for the resources they don't have with the goods that they do - with basically the whole world dependent on them. They have a huge internal base of poor people, and lifting them to a middle class level will alone fuel domestic demand for years to come. T…

There were worries that they'd issued a lot of debt to build real estate that wasn't needed resulting in ghost towns and people thought prices would fall and the banks lending would collapse but they seem to have managed ok. The Chinese actually seem quite smart at managing their system.

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

#210

Post by amenhotep »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #175
incomingpain wrote: post #117

Last 2 reported quarters have 3.8% and 4.4% gdp growth. Next report is end of february. So it's minimum 4 months away at earliest. Stock markets are at 10 year peaks. Unemployment is a little bit high at 4.5%. Inflation is a little bit high at 2.7% US government debt is very high at 125% PMIs are strong across the board. Also in context, trillions in declared new investments in the usa. Probably trillions more in und…

The person declaring "trillions in new investments" is Donald Trump. He doesn't understand how tariffs work, he doesn't understand how trade works, and he doesn't understand how the truth works. So many of the stats you mention are based on potentially-untruthful statements from the Trump administration. When the facts and figures aren't favorable to Trump, his strategy is to shoot the messenger and install his croni…

And the person you're replying to is someone who thinks "The case where Canada must be annexed is if Greenland somehow remains part of Denmark"! The veneer of civility on this site lets some really incredible people slip under the radar.
Post reply on HN