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America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars

economist.com

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Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars

#281
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a concept in the armed forces for making decisions in a given timeframe (struggling to find a source for this). Essentially you do the best you can in the time you are given. Then you move on and iterate. If you dither too much you probably don't have to make a decision anymore as the enemy has made it for you. In that framework it is accepted that a solution is not perfect. I think about these crises the sa…

> There is a concept in the armed forces for making decisions in a given timeframe (struggling to find a source for this). OODA loop? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

I was thinking the same. But it sounds more like how to prevent being OODAed by someone else.

Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars

#282
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch the exchange between Sen Lankford and Sec Yellen yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcvl104tyRY Yellen says unsecured depositors at TBTF banks will always be bailed out, but those at smaller banks are on their own. It's one of the most incredible moments I've witnessed. I'm not sure if there's some hidden agenda being pursued, or if Yellen is just so far removed from the real world that she doesn't under…

I never understand things like this. She looks like a deer caught in the headlights when he asks her the most predictable and basic question about her decisions. How can you be in such a position, make such decisions, and be unable to offer a compelling answer to the most basic questions? Even if it some sort of a hidden agenda and [further] centralizing banking is just seen as a convenient stepping stone towards CBD…

Maybe it's a question not supposed to ask. They all know the answer but it's inconvenient to answer before the public.

Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally! People calling it what it is. Corruption. And the domestic angle isn’t even the worst. Breton-Woods put America in a sort of custodianship which they have betrayed. Raising and lowering rates to promote your domestic economy without even considering the global impact is fucked up if you promised the world that your currency can serve as a trusted foundation. World order is still fluctuating all as a result o…

> if you promised the world that your currency can serve as a trusted foundation. How do people get this backwards? The US didn't say, "use our currency as the global reserve currency!" Countries chose and continue to choose to use the USD for global commerce. No one is forcing them, the USD really is valuable. > World order is still fluctuating all as a result of these betrayals. So raising rates is a betrayal, but…

Also the US runs a deficit so there are lots of opportunities to own dollars abroad.

Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars

#284
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think so. I believe that this is the reason EU banks have been ok so far, as they do need to hedge interest rate risk.

EU banks are ok? Didn't Credite Suisse just go under and had to be forcedly saved by its main competitor?

I have no idea about the substantive discussion, but just to point out: Switzerland is not in the EU.

Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars

#285

1. The government requires banks buy their debt and hold it as reserves because it's considered the safest investment. 2. The government decides that, oops, it printed too much money in 2020/21 and is causing inflation, so it raises rates very quickly. 3. New treasuries yield 4 or 5 times as much in interest as the ones from 1-2 years ago. Why would anyone want to buy those old treasuries near face value now? 4. The…

All comes down to the "too big to fail" problem.

7. In order to inject "massive liquidity into banks" more money is printed.

8. GOTO 2 but for different years.

Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars

#286
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the hidden risk of money markets?

Money-market accounts are not covered by government deposit insurance. But money-market funds make a return for themselves by investing their customers’ cash in risky assets, similarly to a bank. If there’s a run on your money-market fund akin to the bank runs we’ve recently seen, the FDIC isn’t going to save you. (Kinda. The other big distinction between a bank and a money-market fund is that the latter don’t indulg…

Be sure not to confuse money market accounts with money market funds. Money market accounts ARE FDIC and NCUA insured up to $250,000.

Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars

#287
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am wondering what the alternative was? When an economy stops producing services and goods, somebody is going to need to reduce their consumption of said goods eventually. The question is just, who that is. Another poster above mentioned three ways a government can balance their budget: spending less, raising more, decreasing real value of debt by inflation. Each of those has a target "audience", which suffers the…

The trouble is that a large chunk of the media has basically lied about this and told people that no, they'd be able to consume just as much as before if it wasn't for the evil profiteering corporations and the mega-rich stealing from them. They've done things like point to the increase in wealth of the super-rich "during the pandemic" to prove that ordinary people have become poorer because the money they deserve wa…

Do you know where media does the same? In Argentina. Blaming businessman for inflation is very common here.

Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars

#289
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally! People calling it what it is. Corruption. And the domestic angle isn’t even the worst. Breton-Woods put America in a sort of custodianship which they have betrayed. Raising and lowering rates to promote your domestic economy without even considering the global impact is fucked up if you promised the world that your currency can serve as a trusted foundation. World order is still fluctuating all as a result o…

Bretton-Woods is history. Since the Nixon Shock, the USD isn't the global reserve currency anymore. It's still influential, but only because of the giant domestic market in the USA and its status as the only global superpower.

[flagged]

Re: America’s banks are missing hundreds of billions of dollars

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here [1] is a graph of inflation. We've had increasingly accelerating inflation, especially since 1971 [2]. That's the end of Bretton Woods, or the date that the USD became completely unbacked by anything - enabling the freedom to arbitrarily "print" money. In more recent times, even more rapidly accelerating inflation began in July 2020, shortly following the $2.2 trillion CARES act from late March 2020. The "transi…

CPI in 1947 = 21 CPI in 1972 = 42 25 years to double. CPI in 1980 = 84 18 years to double CPI in 1999 = 168 19 years to double 24 years later is still hasn't doubled again. It's hardly a runaway freight train compared to pre 1971 is it?

Yip! You need to keep in mind it's a compound interest type problem, because you're speaking of change relative to a new change. Look at it in terms of raw data with fixed time frames to make it more clear. Here are the data from January of each year, alongside their relative change to the initial date:

1952 - 26

1972 - 41 (+58%)

1992 - 138 (+430%)

2012 - 227 (+773%)

2023 - 300 (+1053%) in 11 years

Now imagine we kept at the same relative rate of change from 1952:

1952 - 26

1972 - 41 (+58%)

1992 - 65 (+150%)

2012 - 103 (+294%)

2023 - 132 (+407%)

Your dollars being worth ~2.5x less than they would have been otherwise is huge, and largely explains nearly every graph from https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ . This also ignores the fact that CPI does not accurately reflect change in costs of things like education, healthcare, and housing which have all inflated in cost far beyond the rate of nominal CPI. And all having the same common denominator of dramatic increases in government $ involvement, which has largely been enabled by the end of Bretton Woods.

I'd also add here that another child comment is completely correct. Inflation had already been increasing at an unacceptable rate prior to 1971, largely due to reckless spending. And that was a major reason we withdrew from Bretton Woods. But it was completely myopic. Instead of solving the problem, we simply gave ourselves room to make it even worse, which we promptly proceeded to do - much much worse. So now instead of solving a relatively small problem in 1971, we strapped a bandaid on it and gave a later generation an exponentially larger problem to solve. The point of this is that the delta from 1952-1972 is already far higher than it "should" have been. The "to the moon" rates from there are simply completely unsustainable.

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