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The Dollar Is Dead

mathmeetsmoney.substack.com

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Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#211

Post by jrs235 »

teamweightloss wrote: post #197
dustingetz wrote: post #5

i would like to see deeper analysis of similar forces playing out in other countries. A weakening dollar implies a strengthening world, but European policy is even more messed up than American, there is still widespread talent export e.g. european programmers working for american companies, indian asian and russian programmers immigrating to Europe or working remote abroad, and China seems to face financial crises ju…

US just put tariffs on every other country in the world, and nothing really happened. Thus, US is strong, not weak. dollar is weaker, US is not.

And nothing really happened, yet. History is about to rhyme with Francisco Franco.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#212

Post by ethbr1 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #137
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "overspending." There is only undertaxing. The debt is literally just the accumulated difference between spending and taxation. If extreme wealth was taxed, the debt would be zero. The point isn't even to "pay for spending" but to enforce a functional social contract, and to limit the political and democratic distortions created by extreme inequality. "Markets" should not have a veto on policy in a democr…

Federal receipts as a percent of GDP: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S Basically unchanged for 70+ years, and far lower historically. Meanwhile significant growth in real GDP per capita and therefore real government receipts per capita. The change isn't that the government is collecting less money. They get more than ever. But growth in government spending has outstripped it, and it has been getting wor…

> But growth in government spending has outstripped it, and it has been getting worse rather than better.

cough Universal single-payer healthcare with aggressive, adversarial price negotiation.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#213

Post by SubiculumCode »

etempleton wrote: post #84

The only thing saving the dollar is a lack of suitable replacement. Trust in the PRC is lower than even the current highly politicized United States, so the Yuan is out. The replacement could be an index of currents tied to G7 or BRICS countries, but that likely gets complicated.

But that is always the case, when one is dominant: No options are nearly as good. Maybe the.dollar is riskier than today, but are there any other countries less risky?

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#214

Post by SubiculumCode »

kesor wrote: post #47

Fiat currencies are like Unicorns and Santa Claus, they stop existing when people grow up and stop believing in them. And there is no need for a "replacement" (i.e. the nothing is better argument) or a need for "enforcement" (i.e. the military argument) or a need for a "system" (i.e. the rule-based-order & courts argument). Fiat currencies simply die off due to lack of trust and belief, and it often happens by way of…

As long as I have to pay my taxes in dollars, I will have need of dollars. That fact gives it an inherent minimum value.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#215

Post by lisbbb »

nostromo wrote: post #53
Workaccount2 wrote: post #29

The country is getting forced by markets into realizing pain for overspending, and only congress can manage this pain. Manage the pain, not remove it is key here. Manage it. Conrgess is totally inept and ridiculously politicized, so it's unlikely they will do anything except make the problem worse. That leaves only the natural fall out of refusing to acknowledge a financial injury before going out on the field to pla…

The issue is that all governments are in roughly the same situation, so there is no alternative other than maybe gold. The US doesn't need to be great or even good, it just needs to be better than the alternatives. The issues facing China and the EU make America's spending problem look mild. (And I agree by the way: America has a massive spending problem.)

My budget disagrees--the inflation has been rough. We in the US need to be great, which means forcing our government to change.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#216

Post by lisbbb »

tim333 wrote: post #204

I don't buy the dollar being dead. His main arguments are the politics are messy and there's a lot of debt. Such things have been true in the past over its 200 year plus history and yet it goes on. The US remains the world superpower and the center for its most valuable companies and the leader in new tech like AI. Things will go on. The British Pound has existed since about the year 600, we had 250% debt to GDP afte…

But it is--it's been on fumes since the 1970s. We're in the final stages now.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#217

Post by const_cast »

nostromo wrote: post #118
tobias3 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but for taxation you need state capacity to enforce it which was chainsawed/DOGED away.

This isn't true. US tax revenue in 2025 is on track to be the highest ever.

Perfect, just in time to put a teeny tiny dent in our new 2 Trillion dollar raised deficit! Thanks "party of fiscal responsibility"!

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#218

Post by lisbbb »

teamweightloss wrote: post #197
dustingetz wrote: post #5

i would like to see deeper analysis of similar forces playing out in other countries. A weakening dollar implies a strengthening world, but European policy is even more messed up than American, there is still widespread talent export e.g. european programmers working for american companies, indian asian and russian programmers immigrating to Europe or working remote abroad, and China seems to face financial crises ju…

US just put tariffs on every other country in the world, and nothing really happened. Thus, US is strong, not weak. dollar is weaker, US is not.

It's kind of too soon to tell how this plays out.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#219

Post by const_cast »

hilsdev wrote: post #92
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "overspending." There is only undertaxing. The debt is literally just the accumulated difference between spending and taxation. If extreme wealth was taxed, the debt would be zero. The point isn't even to "pay for spending" but to enforce a functional social contract, and to limit the political and democratic distortions created by extreme inequality. "Markets" should not have a veto on policy in a democr…

Why is the default to tax more and not spend less? Is there really no limit to the amount of spending the government should do? You see no possible use of resources that would be wasteful?

I'm sure some of it is wasteful, but that last guys who tried to find it where scam artists. And then, despite gutting multiple services including Medicaid for US citizens, we're raising the deficit. By 2 Trillion dollars.

So the whole "cutting wasteful spending" thing... ssss yeah... not really working out I'd say.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#220

Post by starmole »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #196
saubeidl wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I at great risk for having most of my wealth tied to the dollar? Well, you lost 15% compared to Euros this year so far...

It's pretty obvious when I see this comment or others about the dollar losing value at a historic rate that the person commenting read it somewhere and doesn't actually understand the currency movement and has zero context. Your comment isn't even factually correct either - the USD is down 10.63% against the Euro this year, not 15%. Now to add a bit of context, it's up nearly 40% over the last 15 years against the Eu…

Because this was a reply to my comment: It reads to me a lot like "you are reading the tea leaves wrong". Switch the graph, the time frame. But what would be a better way to talk about this? A more helpful and actionable one?
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