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Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

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

#261

Post by JackFr »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #254
JackFr wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I agree that the Democratic party has fumbled the ball (over and over) and deserves a lot of blame for where we are now, but all of the trans talk in 2024 was driven entirely by the right. The Democratic party wasn't talking about trans people in 2024 (if anything the Democratic campaign was conspicuously avoiding the conversation entirely). The trans "debate" that people remember from that time period was driven ent…

They talked about it because they knew the median voter disagreed with the Democrats.

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

#262

Post by hirako2000 »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #256
torginus wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm less and less inclined to believe in capitalism and money as a concept - we've long past moved the concept of money as universal barter, and into strange and speculative theories about how things ought to be valued, with the most valuable things either emerging from immediately unclear value propositions (impossibly valued companies, high-paid jobs that seemingly dont contribute to society) or artifici…

A bottle of water in the desert and a bottle of water in your fridge don't have the same value.

But politics isn't involved.

The point of tender is to represent value.

Your water in the desert costing 100 times what it costs where it rains is meant to represent its scarcity here vs over there.

Take cuban dollars vs normal dollar. In there the two tenders aren't proxy for value. Proxy for a political control so that the wealthy visitor pays 10 times, for the same bottle of water on the same shelf.

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

#263

Post by laluser »

phkahler wrote: post #245
torginus wrote: post #84

I feel like there's some credibility to 'this time it's different' The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon - the US dollar is the world's main reserve currency, the US enforces international order and trade rules via its military strength, it dominates technology and culture through 'US defaultism'. I dont think AI even factors in to this. The US economy is priced for global reach - if it ma…

The dollar is going down in value right now. Thats the plan. It makes foreign goods more expensive and exports more affordable to other countries. Meanwhile it should have less inflationary pressure on domestically produced stuff like housing. I dont know if this is going to work or collapse. If it does work IMO they still need to reduce the debt - current actions are because we are backed into a corner, so that need…

It also increases profits for multi-national US companies since they get paid in other currencies, which they then convert to dollars locally. Basically, they have favorable FX tailwinds.

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

#264

Post by zahlman »

hirako2000 wrote: post #258
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.

I don't see 30%. Maybe 12% from the very recent top, back to wherever it was just a few weeks ago.

https://www.kitco.com/charts/silver

There has been significant recovery in after-hours trading, but check out that "day's range". The low point was around 1:40 PM EST.

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

#265

Post by nofriend »

hirako2000 wrote: post #258
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.

I don't see 30%. Maybe 12% from the very recent top, back to wherever it was just a few weeks ago.

it was at 120 and now it's at 85. yes it's back to where it was a few weeks ago

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

#266

Post by echelon »

phkahler wrote: post #245
torginus wrote: post #84

I feel like there's some credibility to 'this time it's different' The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon - the US dollar is the world's main reserve currency, the US enforces international order and trade rules via its military strength, it dominates technology and culture through 'US defaultism'. I dont think AI even factors in to this. The US economy is priced for global reach - if it ma…

The dollar is going down in value right now. Thats the plan. It makes foreign goods more expensive and exports more affordable to other countries. Meanwhile it should have less inflationary pressure on domestically produced stuff like housing. I dont know if this is going to work or collapse. If it does work IMO they still need to reduce the debt - current actions are because we are backed into a corner, so that need…

The "Mar a Lago Accord" plan [1], for those curious. The US debt is one major rationale behind the strategy.

It's a dangerous plan that relies on keeping allies happy and re-establishing hegemony via a Plaza Accords / Bretton Woods 2.0 type system.

It's not going to work if you simultaneously piss all of the allies off.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ts5wJ6OfzA by Money & Macro, which is a fantastic economics YouTube channel. Patrick Boyle has also spoken about this in pieces.

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

#267

Post by hirako2000 »

chillacy wrote: post #180
acuozzo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their biggest problem[…] is demographic in nature. https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2024/

Korea has a similar demographic shape, and Japan already passed its peak in 2005ish https://www.populationpyramid.net/japan/2024/

Roujin Z shows Japan saw what's coming over 20y ago, already.

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

#268

Post by rayiner »

torginus wrote: post #84

I feel like there's some credibility to 'this time it's different' The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon - the US dollar is the world's main reserve currency, the US enforces international order and trade rules via its military strength, it dominates technology and culture through 'US defaultism'. I dont think AI even factors in to this. The US economy is priced for global reach - if it ma…

> The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon

Citation needed? This feels like a retcon. Remember that the U.S. became the biggest economy in the world in 1890: https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&.... That was half a century before World War II and the military empire that followed.

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

#269

Post by hirako2000 »

irishcoffee wrote: post #238
bigbadfeline wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI had a real impact on certain daily activities, such as search, coding, etc. You aren't addressing the issue at hand, the problem isn't a total lack of impact, it's the cost of that impact, both the actual and the opportunity cost of it . Currently, the AI "revolution" is running on pure credit - as every other bubble - even the operating costs of the AI supply chain exceed its income and economic impact. Their c…

I’m not sure how I’ll feel if it actually happens, but just even entertaining the idea of LLM companies getting bailed out makes me irrationally angry. Like, really? Gonna go for the hat trick here? Housing crisis and Covid stimulus didn’t fuck everyone over enough? It’s not like I can even leave for greener pastures, there’s nowhere to go.

It won't bail out AI ventures directly but it will bail out the banks that financed them.

Not a trick, if banks fall everything falls. what is infuriating: that we can see the value isn't there to justify the cost, yet that unprecedented amounts continue to flood into this tech segment, especially to the loudest and popular and over promising flavour of it: GenAI.

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

#270

Post by panarky »

SllX wrote: post #152
torginus wrote: post #84

I feel like there's some credibility to 'this time it's different' The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon - the US dollar is the world's main reserve currency, the US enforces international order and trade rules via its military strength, it dominates technology and culture through 'US defaultism'. I dont think AI even factors in to this. The US economy is priced for global reach - if it ma…

> Should the US become an unfriendly power to the rest of the western world, it will find the demand for its currency plummeting, which I don't want to outline is a big issue. Right now this is much more of a maybe, possibly, eventually, over a long enough time horizon. As of the end of 2025, USD still made up 57% of foreign reserves vs 20% for the Euro and 3% for the Chinese renminbi. Nearly all commodities are stil…

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 just figments of collective belief. But these wispy and unreal ideas that everyone believes in make it possible for most people to live longer, healthier and less difficult lives.

The "rules-based order" was always partly mythical, but as long as everyone kept pretending, it mostly continued to function.

But when we devolve from the rules-based order to the old order of pure power and might-makes-right, kings and dictators, when there's no more collective belief that the rules apply to the rich and powerful, then the tower of abstractions collapses, and we're back to the cold, hard, brutal and difficult real world.

People will find out that life in the real world is a lot poorer and more miserable than life at the top of the tower of abstractions, even if your brokerage account appears to double.

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